JOSEPH  H.CH 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


FROM  THE  LIBRARY  OF 
FRANK  J.  KLINGBERG 


a, 


THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

THE  STAFFORD  LITTLE  LECTURES 
FOR  1912 


BY 


JOSEPH  H.  CHOATE 


PRINCETON  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 
PRINCETON 

LONDON:  HENRY  FROWDE 
OXFORD   UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

1913 


Copyright,  1913,  by 
PRINCETON  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

Published  February,  1913 
Reprinted   July,  1913 


College 
Library 

OX 


INTRODUCTION 

In  a  recent  and  much-used  manual  of  inter- 
national law,  it  is  said  that  "the  development  of 
international  law  within  the  period  since  the  call 
for  the  First  Peace  Conference  at  The  Hague 
in  1898  has  been  greater  than  that  during  the 
250  years  preceding,  from  the  peace  of  West- 
phalia in  1648  to  the  call  for  The  Hague  Con- 
ference in  1898."  Accepting  this  statement  as 
sufficiently  accurate  for  present  purposes,  without 
stopping  to  consider  whether  it  is  wholly  tenable, 
it  necessarily  follows  that  any  work  showing  the 
nature  of  the  Conferences,  their  procedure  and 
their  results,  renders  a  service  to  the  public.  Es- 
pecially must  this  be  so  if  the  author  is  a  man  of 
wide  experience  and  balanced  judgment,  familiar 
with  the  development  of  international  law  and  the 
methods  of  diplomacy  and  writes  with  first-hand 
knowledge  of  the  subject.  These  qualifications 
will  readily  be  conceded  to  Mr.  Choate  who  rep- 
resented, as  First  Delegate,  the  United  States  at 
the  Second  Hague  Peace  Conference,  and  who 
might  pardonably  say,  quorum  pars  magna 


1567255 


vi  INTRODUCTION 

fui,  were  his  modesty,  as  shown  by  these 
Lectures,  not  equal  to  his  ability.  To  have  con- 
tributed in  a  large  degree  to  the  success  of  the 
Second  Conference,  it  was  necessary  that  he 
should  have  mastered  the  achievements  of  the 
First  Conference  and  read  aright  its  spirit;  and 
his  profound  knowledge  of  international  relations 
gave  him  that  keen  sense  of  distinguishing  be- 
tween the  practicable  and  the  impracticable  with- 
out which  his  role  as  mediator  on  at  least  one 
very  important  occasion  would  have  been  impos- 
sible. Mr.  Choate's  learning,  however,  rests 
lightly  upon  his  shoulders,  and  though  permeat- 
ing the  Lectures,  it  nowhere  obtrudes  itself.  In- 
deed, it  rather  passes  unnoticed,  for  he  has  chosen 
to  lay  before  his  original  audience  at  Princeton  as 
well  as  the  wider  public  to  which  the  printed  word 
appeals,  only  the  larger  and  enduring  results  of 
the  Conference  as  he  looks  back  upon  them  after 
years  of  thought  and  reflection. 

If  the  two  conferences  have  rendered  a  tithe  of 
the  service  claimed  for  them,  it  is  evident  that  the 
international  conference  as  such  should  become 
a  permanent  institution  in  the  sense  that  successive 
conferences  should  meet  at  stated  periods.  Op- 
portunity should  be  given  to  the  nations  to  prepare 
adequately  for  the  meetings.  The  conference 


INTRODUCTION  vii 

should .  organize  itself,  determine  its  procedure, 
elect  its  officers,  and  conduct  its  proceedings  ac- 
cording to  the  wisdom  of  all  the  Powers,  not 
under  the  domination  of  any  one.  We  should  be 
deeply  grateful  to  the  Czar  for  the  idea  of  the 
conference,  but  our  gratitude  need  not  extend  to 
the  point  of  yielding  to  him  or  to  his  advisers  the 
calling  of  the  conference,  the  determination  of  its 
programme,  the  selection  of  its  officers,  and  the 
method  of  procedure  to  be  adopted.  Tutelage 
might  be  necessary  in  the  first  instance,  for  the 
conference  was  a  Russian  proposal  and  in  the  na- 
ture of  an  experiment.  The  Second  Conference 
composed  of  delegates  of  forty-four  nations  was, 
however,  an  experiment  only  in  so  far  as  it  was 
uncertain  whether  a  body  composed  of  representa- 
tives of  practically  all  the  nations  could  act  as 
easily  and  usefully  as  one  composed  of  represen- 
tatives of  fewer  nations.  When  this  doubt  was 
removed  by  the  success  of  the  Second  Conference, 
the  reason  for  Russian  initiative  and  Russian 
guidance,  not  to  say  domination,  ceased,  and  the 
conference  becomes  international  in  origin  as  well 
as  in  composition. 

Secretary  Root  instructed  the  American  delega- 
tion to  the  Second  Conference  to  "favor  the  adop- 
tion of  a  resolution  by  the  Conference  providing 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

for  the  holding  of  further  conferences  within 
fixed  periods,  and  arranging  the  machinery  by 
which  such  conferences  may  be  called  and  the 
terms  of  the  programme  may  be  arranged,  with- 
out awaiting  any  new  and  specific  initiative  on  the 
part  of  the  Powers  or  any  one  of  them."  Mr. 
Choate  personally  took  charge  of  the  matter  and 
after  many  difficulties,  to  which  he  humorously 
refers  in  the  Lectures,  he  succeeded  not  only  in 
bringing  about  an  agreement  among  his  col- 
leagues, but  actually  persuaded  the  first  Russian 
delegate,  who  was  also  President  of  the  Confer- 
ence, to  propose  that  a  third  conference  meet 
approximately  in  1915,  that  two  years  in  advance 
of  the  meeting  a  preparatory  committee  of  the 
Powers  be  appointed  to  consider  what  subjects 
were  ripe  for  international  agreement,  to  prepare 
a  programme  and  to  devise  a  method  of  organiza- 
tion and  procedure  for  the  conference  itself.  It  is 
not  too  much,  to  say  that  this  very  important  re- 
sult was  due  to  Mr.  Choate's  firmness  and  tact, 
for  at  one  time  during  the  negotiations  an  agree- 
ment seemed  impossible,  and  he  was  obliged  to 
inform  the  President  of  the  Conference  that  in 
case  of  failure  to  reach  an  agreement,  the  Ameri- 
can Delegation  would  consider  itself  obliged, 
pursuant  to  instructions,  officially  to  present  the 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

subject  to  the  Conference  in  plenary  session.  The 
result  was  a  compromise;  and  while  the  recom- 
mendation does  not  go  so  far  as  the  friends  of  a 
periodic  conference  would  like,  its  acceptance  in 
its  present  form  has  rendered  the  conference  a 
permanent  international  institution.  Mr.  Choate 
rightly  says  that  the  recommendation  does  not 
make  it  the  duty  of  any  Power  to  call  the  con- 
ference. It  is  well  known,  however,  that  the  Sec- 
ond Conference  was  in  reality  initiated  by  Presi- 
dent Roosevelt,  not  by  the  Czar  of  Russia,  and 
that  President  Roosevelt  chivalrously  withdrew 
when  the  termination  of  the  Russo-Japanese  war 
made  it  possible  for  the  Czar  to  turn  his  thoughts 
to  peace.  This  action  of  President  Roosevelt  is 
officially  recognized  in  the  opening  lines  of  the 
Final  Act  which  states  that  the  Conference  was 
"proposed  in  the  first  instance  by  the  President  of 
the  United  States."  What  one  President  did,  an- 
other may  do,  should  the  same  necessity  arise. 

The  international  conference  is,  as  Mr.  Choate 
clearly  states,  a  diplomatic,  not  a  parliamentary 
body,  and  he  explains  the  difference  by  the  fact 
that  unanimity  is  required  in  the  proceedings  of 
the  one,  whereas  a  majority  suffices  in  the  other. 
He  also  shows  that  the  conference  as  such  does 
not  bind  the  nations  by  its  action,  but  leaves  the 


x  INTRODUCTION 

conventions  and  other  agreements  adopted  by  it  to 
be  approved  by  each  of  the  nations  in  accordance 
with  its  constitution,  and  that  the  individual  na- 
tion is  only  bound  by  such  subsequent  approval. 
This  would  appear  to  be  necessarily  the  case  in 
an  assembly  of  equals;  for  if  the  states  be  legally 
equal,  no  state  can  or  should  coerce  another.  The 
conference  therefore  proposes  projects  to  the  na- 
tions ;  it  does  not,  as  is  the  case  with  parliaments, 
impose  them.  If  the  conference  is  to  be  con- 
sidered as  a  legislature,  it  is  only  a  legislature  ad 
referendum;  but  whatever  be  its  nature,  it  has 
come  to  be  considered  the  organ  of  the  society  of 
nations  for  the  development  of  international  law. 
The  expression  "society"  necessarily  presupposes 
a  law  to  regulate  the  intercourse  of  the  members 
of  the  society,  a  fact  tersely  stated  in  the  familiar 
expression  of  Cicero,  Ubi  societas,  ibi  jus. 

For  centuries  this  society  has  gradually  been 
taking  definite  form  and  shape  until  at  present  it 
consists  of  all  nations  which  accept  and  apply  the 
principles  of  international  law.  A  union  of  a 
loose  and  flexible  nature,  as  distinct  from  a  po- 
litical union  or  federation,  therefore  exists,  but 
the  nations,  curiously  enough,  have  been  as  un- 
conscious of  its  existence  as  Monsieur  Jourdain  in 
Moliere's  immortal  comedy  was  of  the  fact  that 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

he  had  talked  prose  for  the  past  forty  years.  The 
nature  of  this  society  and  the  purpose  of  the  con- 
ferences at  The  Hague  have  never  been  more  ad- 
mirably stated  than  by  Mr.  Choate's  distinguished 
colleague,  Monsieur  Leon  Bourgeois,  who  says 
that  "The  purpose  of  The  Hague  Conference  is 
the  juridical  organization  of  international  life,  the 
formation  of  a  society  of  law  among  the  nations. 
In  order  that  this  society  may  come  into  being 
and  live,  the  following  conditions  are  essential : 
(i)  the  universal  assent  of  the  nations  to  the 
establishment  of  a  truly  international  system;  (2) 
the  acceptance  by  all  of  the  same  conception  of  the 
law  common  to  all,  of  the  same  bond  between  the 
large  and  the  small,  since  they  are  all  equal  in 
point  of  consent  and  responsibility;  (3)  the  pre- 
cise and  detailed  application  of  these  principles 
successively  to  all  fields  of  international  relations 
in  peace  as  well  as  in  war."* 

Supposing,  however,  an  agreement  upon  the 
principles  of  law  which  should  regulate  the  con- 
duct of  nations  in  their  mutual  intercourse,  we 
know  that  differences  of  opinion  are  sure  to  arise 
between  nations  as  between  individuals  regard- 
ing the  interpretation  and  application  of  the  law. 

*  Leon  Bourgeois,  Pour  la  socicte  des  nations   (1910), 
P.  285. 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

Therefore,  there  should  be  called  into  being  in- 
ternational tribunals  for  the  interpretation  and 
application  of  principles  of  law,  just  as  national 
tribunals  exist  for  like  purposes.  Mr.  Choate  de- 
voted his  energies  to  the  creation  of  two  such 
tribunals,  the  International  Court  of  Prize  and 
the  Court  of  Abitral  Justice.  Through  his  timely 
intervention  and  conciliatory  attitude  in  the  ques- 
tion of  the  prize  court,  he  was  able  to  adjust 
apparently  irreconciliable  differences.  He  gener- 
ously places  the  compromise  to  the  credit  of  the 
American  Delegation,  but  it  was  in  fact  his  per- 
sonal achievement,  and  the  fundamental  agree- 
ment upon  the  principles  of  an  international  Court 
of  Prize  is  his  contribution  to  the  establishment 
of  that  Court.  But  the  Prize  Court  deals  with 
questions  arising  out  of  a  state  of  war.  It  is 
essential  to  the  ordinary  administration  of  justice 
between  nations  that  an  international  tribunal 
exist  for  the  decision  of  controversies  arising  in 
time  of  peace,  now  fortunately  the  normal  rela- 
tion between  states.  Therefore,  Mr.  Choate 
urged  upon  the  Conference,  in  season  as  well  as 
out  of  season,  the  creation  of  a  truly  permanent 
court  composed  of  judges  "acting  under  a  sense 
of  judicial  responsibility,"  to  quote  the  happy 
phraseology  of  Secretary  Root's  instructions. 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

After  weeks  of  doubt  and  uncertainty,  a  project 
of  thirty-five  articles  regulating  the  organization, 
jurisdiction  and  procedure  of  a  truly  permanent 
court  of  arbitral  justice  was  adopted  by  the  Con- 
ference, with  the  recommendation,  as  stated  by 
Mr.  Choate,  that  the  court  be  established  when  the 
Powers  had  agreed,  through  diplomatic  channels, 
upon  a  method  of  appointing  the  judges.  This  is 
also  a  triumph  with  which  Mr.  Choate  credits  the 
American  Delegation,  but  the  official  acts  and 
documents  of  the  Conference  tell  another  story, 
and  history  will  count  Mr.  Choate  as  among  the 
founders  of  the  International  Court  when  it  has 
been  established. 

But  a  law  would  be  of  little  importance  and  in- 
ternational tribunals  would  be  little  better  than 
empty  courts  unless  there  were  an  agree- 
ment by  the  nations  to  observe  the  principles  of 
law  in  their  mutual  relations  and  to  submit  to 
the  determination  of  the  courts  disputes  which 
arise  concerning  either  the  existence  or  application 
of  principles  of  law.  Therefore,  acting  under 
the  instructions  of  Secretary  Root,  Mr.  Choate 
proposed  a  general  treaty  of  arbitration  which 
pledged  the  nations  to  submit  to  arbitration  differ- 
ences of  a  legal  nature  and  especially  disputes 
concerning  the  interpretation  or  application  of  in- 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

ternational  treaties  or  conventions,  reserving  from 
the  obligation  to  arbitrate,  disputes,  which  al- 
though of  a  legal  nature,  involve  the  independ- 
ence, vital  interests  and  honor  of  the  contracting 
parties.  After  weeks  of  discussion  and  heated 
debate  in  which  the  leading  delegates  participated, 
the  proposed  treaty  was  defeated,  primarily, 
through  the  irreconciliable  opposition  of  Ger- 
many. If  Mr.  Choate's  intervention  in  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  Prize  Court  can  be  cited  as  an 
instance  of  gentle  persuasion  and  of  gracious  and 
happy  phrase,  his  addresses  on  the  subject  of 
arbitration  glow  with  emotion  and  the  intensity 
of  conviction. 

It  has  been  both  a  pleasure  and  an  honor  to 
supplement  Mr.  Choate's  account  of  the  Con- 
ferences by  a  few  brief  paragraphs  devoted  to 
the  services  which  he  himself  rendered  and 
which  are  hidden  even  to  the  most  careful  reader 
of  the  Lectures.  As  one  associated  with  him 
at  the  Second  Conference,  I  would  be  remiss  if, 
in  conclusion,  I  did  not  mention  his  courteous  and 
sympathetic  bearing  towards  his  colleagues  of 
the  American  Delegation,  which  made  cooper- 
ation as  easy  and  profitable  as  its  memory  is 
pleasing  and  abiding. 

JAMES  BROWN  SCOTT. 


THE  FIRST  CONFERENCE* 

It  was  on  the  24th  of  August,  1898 — a  year 
which  was  marked  by  the  death  of  Bismarck, 
whose  policy  of  blood  and  iron  had  secured  the 
peace  of  Europe  for  an  entire  generation,  and 
by  our  Spanish  war,  which  had  brought  the 
United  States  into  prominence  as  a  great  world 
power. — that  the  youthful  Emperor  of  Russia, 
Nicholas  II,  surprised  the  world  by  communica- 
ting to  each  of  the  diplomatic  representatives  of 
foreign  nations  accredited  to  his  Court,  his  fa- 
mous proposition  for  a  World's  Peace  Confer- 
ence, which  meeting,  a  year  later,  in  answer  to 
his  call,  by  its  achievements  and  its  aspirations,  is 
destined  to  live  in  history  as  a  great  landmark. 

The  startling  summons  was  due,  I  believe,  to 
his  own  initiative,  his  own  love  of  peace  with 
foreign  nations,  inspired,  no  doubt,  by  the  ex- 
ample of  Alexander  I,  who,  at  about  the  same  age, 
nearly  one  hundred  years  before,  in  1804,  in  a 
despatch  to  his  envoy  at  London,  in  the  heat  of 
the  contest  of  the  nations  with  Napoleon,  pro- 

«The  numbers  in  the  text  refer  to  notes  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


4  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

posed  that  at  the  conclusion  of  the  general  war, 
the  nations  of  Europe  should  unite  in  a  treaty 
which  would  determine,  to  use  his  own  language : 
"the  positive  rights  of  nations,  assure  the  privi- 
lege of  neutrality,  assert  the  obligation  of  never 
beginning  war  until  all  the  resources  which  the 
mediation  of  a  third  party  could  offer  have  been 
exhausted,  having  by  this  means  brought  to  light 
the  respective  grievances,  and  tried  to  remove 
them." 

"It  is  on  such  principles,"  he  said,  "as  these 
that  one  could  proceed  to  a  general  pacification, 
and  give  birth  to  a  league  of  which  the  stipula- 
tions would  form,  so  to  speak,  a  new  code  of  the 
law  of  nations,  which,  sanctioned  by  the  greater 
part  of  the  nations  of  Europe,  would  without 
difficulty  become  the  immutable  rule  of  the  Cabi- 
nets, while  those  who  should  try  to  infringe  it 
would  risk  bringing  upon  themselves  the  forces 
of  the  new  Union."1 

It  is  true  that  Alexander  I  was  a  dreamer. 
But  what  a  glorious  dream  it  was  in  the 
midst  of  that  carnival  of  blood  and  slaughter 
which  deluged  the  first  years  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century ! 

It  was  in  this  spirit  that  the  youthful  Emperor, 
who  had  recently  come  to  the  throne  of  the 


THE  FIRST  CONFERENCE  5 

Czars,  proposed  to  the  Nations  a  Conference  to 
be  held  at  The  Hague  in  the  closing  year  of  the 
century,  thinking,  he  declares,  "that  the  present 
moment  would  be  very  favorable  for  seeking,  by 
means  of  international  discussion,  the  most  effec- 
tual means  of  insuring  to  all  peoples  the  benefits 
of  a  real  and  durable  peace,  and,  above  all,  of 
putting  an  end  to  the  progressive  development 
of  the  present  armaments.  The  maintenance  of 
general  peace,  and  a  possible  reduction  of  the 
excessive  armaments  which  weigh  upon  all  na- 
tions, present  themselves  in  the  existing  condition 
of  the  whole  world,  as  the  ideal  towards  which 
the  endeavors  of  all  governments  should  be 
directed."2 

The  terrible  burden  upon  all  the  nations  of 
these  excessive  and  growing  armaments  has  no- 
where been  so  vividly  described,  not  even  by  the 
'X.most  ardent  advocates  of  peace.  He  declares  that 
they  "strike  at  the  public  prosperity  at  its  very 
source.  The  intellectual  and  physical  strength  of 
the  nations,  labor  and  capital,  are  for  the  ma- 
jor part  diverted  from  their  natural  application, 
and  unproductively  consumed.  Hundreds  of  mil- 
lions are  devoted  to  acquiring  terrible  engines  of 
destruction,  which,  though  to-day  regarded  as  the 
last  word  of  science,  are  destined  to-morrow  to 


6  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

lose  all  value  in  consequence  of  some  fresh  dis- 
covery in  the  same  field.  The  economic  crises, 
due  in  great  part  to  the  system  of  armaments, 
and  the  continual  danger  which  lies  in  this  mass- 
ing of  war  material,  are  transforming  the  armed 
peace  of  our  days  into  a  crushing  burden,  which 
the  peoples  have  more  and  more  difficulty  in  bear- 
ing. It  appears  evident,  then,  that  if  this  state 
of  things  were  prolonged,  it  would  inevitably 
lead  to  the  very  cataclysm  which  it  is  desired  to 
avert,  and  the  horrors  of  which  make  every  think- 
ing man  shudder  in  advance."3  Another  dream 
which  it  will  take  perhaps  another  century  to 
realize ! 

There  was  no  other  object  proposed  for  the 
Conference  in  this  first  declaration  than  to  limit, 
and,  if  possible,  in  some  way  to  reduce  the  ter- 
rible armaments  and  the  fatal  budgets  which  were 
involved  in  their  maintenance. 

Favorable  replies  having  been  received  from 
the  other  powers,  Count  Mouravieff,  the  Foreign 
Secretary  of  the  Czar,  on  January  n,  1899,  is- 
sued a  circular,  in  which  it  is  stated  that  since 
his  proposal  of  August  24,  only  four  months  be- 
fore, "notwithstanding  the  strong  current  of  opin- 
ion which  exists  in  favor  of  the  ideas  of  general 
pacification,  the  political  horizon  has  recently  un- 


THE  FIRST  CONFERENCE  7 

dergone  a  decided  change,"  and  that  "several 
powers  have  undertaken  fresh  armaments,  striv- 
ing to  increase  further  their  military  forces."4 

But,  in  spite  of  all  that,  he  proposes  a  pre- 
liminary exchange  of  ideas  between  the  powers, 
with  the  object  of  "seeking  without  delay  means 
for  putting  a  limit  to  the  progressive  increase 
of  military  and  naval  armaments,  a  question  the 
solution  of  which  becomes  evidently  more  and 
more  urgent  in  view  of  the  fresh  extension  given 
to  these  armaments,"  and,  secondly,  "of  prepar- 
ing the  way  for  a  discussion  of  the  questions 
relating  to  the  possibility  of  preventing  armed 
conflicts  by  the  pacific  means  at  the  disposal  of 
international  diplomacy,"  and  suggesting  a  pro- 
gramme for  the  Conference,  which  was  in  part 
accepted  and  followed  by  it  when  it  met.5 

It  appears,  by  the  answer  of  Lord  Salisbury, 
that  not  only  England,  but  Russia  itself,  had  par- 
ticipated in  this  recent  increase.6 

The  Conference  met  at  The  Hague  on  the 
1 8th  of  May,  the  Emperor's  birthday,  in  the  fa- 
mous "House  in  the  Wood,"  the  summer  palace 
of  the  Dutch  royal  family — twenty-six  Nations, 
including,  besides  those  of  Europe,  the  United 
States  of  America  and  Mexico  alone  of  American 
nations,  and  China,  Japan,  Persia  and  Siam,  each 


8  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

represented,  I  believe,  by  the  most  competent  men 
that  could  be  selected  for  such  a  distinguished  ser- 
vice, our  own  delegation  consisting  of  Andrew 
D.  White,  Seth  Low,  Stanford  Newell,  Admiral 
(then  Captain)  Mahan,  representing  our  Navy, 
Captain  Crosier,  of  the  United  States  Army,  with 
Frederick  William  Holls  as  Secretary. 

Notwithstanding  the  declared  object  of  the 
Conference,  concurred  in,  actually  or  professedly, 
by  all  the  Nations,  these  terrible  and  oppressive 
armaments  have  gone  on  steadily  increasing 
from  that  day  to  this,  and  are  now  multiplying 
at  a  rate  more  excessive  than  ever.  They  have 
become  of  such  enormous  weight  and  so  burden- 
some to  the  people  of  many  nations,  that  the 
cataclysm  prophesied  by  the  Emperor  in  his  first 
rescript,  "the  horrors  of  which  make  every  think- 
ing man  shudder  in  advance,"  seems  now  to  be 
actually  impending. 

Strikes  of  a  most  formidable  character,  arising, 
in  large  measure,  from  the  burdens  resting  upon 
the  people,  are  the  threatening  symptoms  of  the 
approaching  storm. 

Even  in  the  last  session  of  Parliament  the  First 
Lord  of  the  British  Admirality,  speaking  evi- 
dently, with  the  full  authority  of  his  Government, 
has  declared  its  solemn  purpose  to  keep  its  naval 


THE  FIRST  CONFERENCE  9 

armaments  sixty  per  cent,  or  more  ahead  of  those 
of  any  other  nation,  and  has  thus  issued  a  direct 
challenge  to  Germany  to  approach  within  that  dis- 
tance. Possibly  this  was  with  the  hope  of  forcing 
Great  Britain's  great  rival  to  make  or  to  listen  to 
overtures  for  an  agreement.  But  he  little  ap- 
preciates the  spirit  of  the  German  Nation  or  its 
Emperor,  who  believes  that  they  will  decline  the 
challenge. 

As  soon  as  the  Conference  of  1899  was  organ- 
ized, the  subject  which  had  been  the  impelling 
cause  of  its  gathering  was  referred  to  a  commit- 
tee which  included  many  of  its  most  able  and  dis- 
tinguished members,  by  whom  it  was  discussed. 
In  concrete  form,  Colonel  Gilinsky,  of  Russia, 
proposed,  "as  to  armies,  an  international  agree- 
ment for  the  term  of  five  years,  stipulating  for 
the  non-augmentation  of  the  present  number  of 
troops  kept  in  time  of  peace"  and  "the  mainte- 
nance, for  the  term  of  five  years,  of  the  amount 
of  the  military  budget  in  force  at  the  present 
time,"  and  "as  regards  navies,  the  acceptance  in 
principle  of  fixing  for  a  term  of  three  years  the 
amount  of  the  naval  budget,  and  an  agreement 
not  to  increase  the  total  amount  for  this  triennial 
period,"  and  he  made  a  very  earnest  and  honest 
appeal  for  the  adoption  of  these  measures.7 


10  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

The  chief  spokesman  in  opposition  was  the  rep- 
resentative of  the  Emperor  of  Germany,8  and, 
after  his  response,  the  matter  was  referred  to  a 
sub-committee,  who  reported  that  with  the  excep- 
tion of  Colonel  Gilinsky,  they  were  unanimously 
of  opinion  that  the  scheme  proposed  was  imprac- 
ticable and  therefore  could  not  be  approved,  and 
that  a  more  profound  study  of  the  question  by 
the  Governments  was  desirable.9 

Thanks,  however,  to  the  most  eloquent  and 
impassioned  appeal  of  Monsieur  Leon  Bourgeois, 
the  first  delegate  of  France,  a  resolution  was 
unanimously  adopted,  that  "the  Committee  con- 
siders that  a  limitation  of  the  military  charges 
which  now  weigh  upon  the  world  is  greatly  to 
be  desired  in  the  interests  of  the  material  and 
moral  welfare  of  humanity,"  and,  at  the  end, 
the  Conference,  in  its  final  plenary  session,  unani- 
mously adopted  the  resolution  proposed  by  the 
Committee  and  remitted  the  subject  to  further 
study  by  the  Nations,  who,  unhappily,  do  not 
seem  to  have  yet  begun  the  study.10 

There  is  no  doubt  that  in  the  condition  of 
Europe  at  that  time,  the  question  was  practically 
impossible  of  solution,  and  no  other  result  could 
have  been  anticipated  from  the  time  the  Confer- 
ence met. 


THE  FIRST  CONFERENCE  n 

The  position  of  our  own  representatives  in  the 
matter  is  worth  noting.  The  delegation  of  the 
United  States  concurred  in  the  result  which  had 
been  reached  as  the  only  practicable  solution  of 
the  Russian  proposal :  "The  delegation  wishes  to 
place  upon  the  record  that  the  United  States  in 
so  doing  does  not  express  any  opinion  as  to  the 
course  to  be  taken  by  the  states  of  Europe,  .  .  . 
and  expresses  a  determination  to  refrain  from 
enunciating  opinions  upon  matters,  into  which,  as 
they  concern  Europe  alone,  the  United  States  has 
no  claim  to  enter,"  adding  that  "the  .  .  .  military 
and  naval  armaments  of  the  United  States  are  at 
present  so  small,  relatively,  to  the  extent  of  terri- 
tory and  the  number  of  the  population,  as  well 
as  in  comparison  with  those  of  other  nations,  that 
their  size  can  entail  no  additional  burden  or  ex- 
pense upon  the  latter,  nor  can  even  form  a  sub- 
ject for  profitable  mutual  discussion."11 

And  so  the  Nations  of  Europe  were  left  free, 
without  any  check  whatever  from  the  Confer- 
ence, to  increase  their  military  and  naval  arma- 
ments,— a  freedom  of  which  they  rapidly  took 
advantage. 

We  may  therefore  dismiss,  with  whatever  dis- 
appointment we  may  feel,  the  subject  of  limita- 
tion of  armaments  by  an  international  Conference, 
because  I  believe  it  is  a  question  that  never  can  be 


12 

so  settled,  that  can  only  be  determined  by  treaties 
or  agreements  between  the  individual  nations  who 
maintain  the  armaments,  either  two  by  two,  or 
all  together,  and  that  to  subject  such  a  question 
to  determination  by  a  Conference  which  now 
consists  of  forty-four  nations,  of  which  only 
eight  or  ten  have  armaments  worth  speaking  of, 
and  all  the  rest  are  without  any  considerable 
armaments,  is  practically  an  impossibility. 

I  turn,  therefore,  with  great  pleasure,  to  pre- 
sent very  briefly  the  great  things  which  the 
Conference  of  1899  did  accomplish,  and  which 
contributed,  as  I  believe,  very  largely  to  the  ad- 
vancement of  civilization,  the  mitigation  of  the 
horrors  of  war,  and  the  practical  promotion  of 
the  cause  of  peace. 

We  need  hardly  more  than  mention  the  con- 
vention agreed  upon  by  the  assembled  Nations 
with  respect  to  the  laws  and  customs  of  war  on 
land,  which  was  largely  of  a  technical  nature. 
It  determined  the  qualifications  of  belligerents, 
and  regulations  relating  to  prisoners  of  war, 
tending  to  ascertain  and  ameliorate  their  condi- 
tion, and  the  rules  governing  their  conduct  and 
treatment.  It  also  concerned  itself  with  the  treat- 
ment of  the  sick  and  wounded,  with  spies,  flags 
of  truce,  capitulations  and  armistice,  and  the  mili- 


13 

tary  authority  over  hostile  territory,  the  detention 
of  belligerents,  and  the  care  of  the  wounded  in 
neutral  countries,  and  other  matters  of  a  purely 
technical  character.12  But  these,  though  tech- 
nical, were  all  in  the  spirit  of  an  enlarged  hu- 
manity, and  tended,  in  a  considerable  degree,  to 
mitigate  the  horrors  of  war. 

This  codification  of  the  laws  and  customs  of 
land  warfare  was  based  upon  the  Laws  and  Cus- 
toms of  Warfare  adopted  by  the  Brussel's  Con- 
ference in  1874,  which  in  turn  grew  out  of  Dr. 
Francis  Lieber's  Instructions  for  the  Government 
of  Armies  in  the  Field,  known  as  General  Orders 
No.  100,  of  1863. 13  So  the  United  States  may 
claim  a  special  share  in  their  origin.  At  Brussels 
they  were  made  more  specific,  and  in  this  Con- 
ference of  1899  their  scope  was  broadened  and 
they  seem  to  have  been  made  binding  upon  all 
the  parties  attending. 

There  were  three  special  declarations  adopted 
which  concerned  the  customs  of  war  in  connec- 
tion with  modern  inventions  and  improvements, 
which  greatly  interested  the  entire  Conference. 
The  first  prohibition  forbade,  for  a  term  of  five 
years,  the  launching  of  projectiles  and  explosives 
from  balloons,  or  by  other  new  methods  of  a 
similar  nature.14  This  was  continued  by  the 


I4  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

Second  Conference  of  1907,  for  a  period  extend- 
ing to  the  close  of  the  Third  Conference.15 
While  the  Second  Conference  was  yet  in  Session, 
news  came  from  Germany  that  a  dirigible  balloon, 
with  a  speed  of  thirty  miles  an  hour,  had  made  a 
successful  ascent,  and  that  in  France  a  cigar- 
shaped  airship  had  made  thirty-one  leagues  an 
hour  with  the  wind  and  eighteen  leagues  against 
the  wind,  and  had  manoeuvred  successfully  in  the 
environs  of  Paris.  Predictions  were  freely  in- 
dulged in  that  in  four  or  five  years  the  air  would 
be  as  full  of  airships  as  the  streets  then  were  of 
automobiles. 

Fortunately,  this  prophecy  has  not  yet  been 
quite  fulfilled,  although  progress  in  that  direction 
has  been  so  rapid,  that  we  may  well  hope  that  the 
Third  Conference  will  make  the  prohibition 
perpetual,  in  full  sympathy  with  the  declaration 
of  Lord  Reay,  one  of  the  British  Delegates  in 
the  Second  Conference,  that  "two  elements,  the 
earth  and  the  sea,  are  quite  sufficient  for  military 
operations,  and  that  the  air  should  be  left  free." 
"What  purpose,"  he  asked,  "will  be  served  by  the 
protective  measures  already  adopted  for  war  on 
land,  if  we  open  to  the  scourge  of  war  a  new 
field  more  terrible  perhaps  than  all  the  others?"16 
Unless,  indeed,  some  future  Conference  should 


THE  FIRST  CONFERENCE  15 

be  of  the  opinion  expressed  by  a  celebrated 
Austrian  statesman,  that  "all  the  armaments  in 
the  world  will  be  rendered  obsolete  by  the  advent 
of  war-ships  in  the  air"17  and  should,  from 
motives  of  economy,  adopt  them  as  a  substitute 
for  all  their  existing  armies  and  navies.  As  the 
matter  stands,  the  Senate  of  the  United  States 
ratified  this  prohibition  as  adopted  by  the  Second 
Conference  on  March  12,  1908. 

In  the  same  spirit  of  humanity,  the  Conference 
of  1899,  after  much  discussion,  agreed  to  ab- 
stain from  the  use  of  projectiles,  the  object  of 
which  is  diffusion  of  asphyxiating  or  deleterious 
gases,18  and  from  the  use  of  bullets  which 
expand  or  flatten  easily  in  the  human  body, 
such  as  bullets  with  a  hard  envelope  that  does 
not  entirely  cover  the  core,  or  is  pierced  with 
incisions.19 

The  Nations  assembled,  for  the  first  time  unan- 
imously accepted  the  Red  Cross  Convention  of 
Geneva  of  1864  and  ratified  the  same  with  some 
amendments,  as  applied  to  naval  warfare,  all 
tending  directly  in  the  interest  of  humanity.20 

In  the  course  of  the  discussions  which  this  sub- 
ject evoked,  interesting  objections  were  made  by 
certain  Eastern  nations  to  the  provision  that  all 
'hospital  ships  shall  make  themselves  known  by 


i6 

hoisting,  together  with  their  national  flags,  a 
white  flag  with  a  red  cross  provided  by  the 
Geneva  convention.  These  objections,  based  on 
religious  grounds,  indicate  the  character  of  the 
Conference  as  not  confined  to  Christian  Nations, 
but  as  being  of  a  world-wide  character. 

For  instance,  the  First  Delegate  of  Persia  de- 
clared that,  pursuant  to  instructions  from  his 
government,  Persia  would  claim  as  a  distinctive 
flag  for  hospital  ships,  a  white  flag  with  a  red 
sun,  the  cross  being  impossible  on  account  of  ob- 
jections likely  to  be  raised  in  a  Mohammedan 
army. 

To  the  same  effect  the  Royal  Government  of 
Siam  reserved  the  right  to  change  on  Siamese  hos- 
pital ships  the  emblem  of  the  Geneva  flag  to  a 
symbol  sacred  in  the  Buddhistic  cult,  and  calcu- 
lated to  increase  the  saving  authority  of  the  flag. 

The  representative  of  Turkey  also  declared 
that  on  all  occasions  where  Turkish  hospital  ships 
have  to  perform  their  mission,  the  emblem  of  the 
Red  Cross  would  be  replaced  by  the  Red  Crescent. 

The  free  participation  on  equal  terms,  of  these 
Eastern  Nations  in  the  Hague  Conferences,  with- 
out regard  to  race  or  religion,  the  absolute  and 
equal  sovereignty  of  each  being  fully  recognized 
by  all  the  rest,  suggests  the  hope  and  warrants 


THE  FIRST  CONFERENCE  17 

the  belief  that,  at  any  rate,  we  have  seen  the 
last  of  religious  wars,  which  for  so  many  cen- 
turies, desolated  Europe,  although  Italy,  at  the 
moment,  seems  doing  her  best  to  provoke  one. 
Christians  against  Mohammedans,  Catholics 
against  Protestants,  made  war  the  chief  business 
of  nations  for  many  ages.  For  a  long  era,  it 
seemed  as  if  the  coming  of  the  Prince  of  Peace 
was  at  last  producing  more  wars  than  it  pre- 
vented. What  a  terrible  idea  it  was  to  couple 
His  sacred  name  and  cross  with  the  terrible 
engines  of  destruction  under  the  standard  "In 
hoc  signo  vinces."  No  more  wars,  at  any  rate, 
for  Christ's  sake  or  in  His  name.  His  cross 
will  appear  upon  the  battlefield  only  to  bring 
healing  to  the  sick,  help  to  the  wounded  and 
euthanasia  to  the  dying.  Perhaps  these  Geneva 
Conferences  are,  to  the  friends  of  peace,  the  best 
sign  of  the  times.  They  bring  together  all  the 
Nations  in  very  close  touch  in  the  holy  cause  of 
humanity,  and  do  much  to  promote  the  idea  of 
the  brotherhood  of  man. 

The  original  initiative  of  the  Red  Cross  move- 
ment having  been  taken  by  the  Swiss  federal 
government,  it  was  decided  that  that  Govern- 
ment should  continue  to  enjoy  the  well  merited 
honor  of  leadership  in  all  matters  pertaining  to 


l8  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

the  Geneva  convention,  and  it  was  recommended 
to  the  Government  to  call  a  further  conference 
at  an  early  day  for  that  purpose.21 

Professor  de  Martens,  who  was  President  of 
the  Committee  which  had  in  charge  the  subject, — 
one  of  the  greatest  international  lawyers  or  jurists 
of  his  time,  and  who  was  also  an  active  and  in- 
fluential member  of  the  Second  Conference  in 
1907,  and  whose  untimely  death  shortly  after  the 
close  of  that  Conference  was  justly  lamented  by 
all  Nations,  has  expressed  his  sense  of  the  value 
of  this  portion  of  the  work  of  the  Conference  of 
1899  in  the  following  emphatic  language: 

"Finally,  the  Red  Cross  treaty  for  times  of 
naval  warfare,  signed  by  the  Conference  at  The 
Hague,  is  the  happy  solution  of  the  question 
which  the  Powers  of  Europe  have  been  studying 
for  thirty  years.  Since  1868  the  'additional  arti- 
cles' to  the  treaty  of  Geneva  have  existed,  where- 
by the  beneficent  influence  of  the  treaty  of  Geneva 
on  wounded  and  sick  soldiers  was  also  extended 
to  sea  combats.  For  thirty-one  years  diplomatic 
negotiations  have  been  carried  on  on  this  ques- 
tion; all  the  Red  Cross  conferences  which  have 
taken  place  in  the  last  twenty  years  have  pro- 
claimed the  necessity  of  recognizing  the  Red 
Cross  treaty  for  the  sick  and  wounded  in  naval 


THE  FIRST  CONFERENCE  19 

warfare.  But  nothing  effectual  was  accomplished 
up  to  the  Conference  at  The  Hague.  It  was  this 
Conference  that  caused  the  final  adoption  by 
(twenty-six)  powers  of  the  principle  whereby  the 
wounded  in  times  of  naval  warfare  shall  have  the 
same  right  to  have  their  person,  their  life,  their 
health  and  their  property  respected,  as  the  wound- 
ed in  case  of  warfare  on  land."22 

In  view,  however,  of  the  total  failure  of  the 
Conference  to  act  at  all  upon  the  primal  ques- 
tion for  which  the  Emperor  of  Russia  had  called 
it  into  being,  and  the  recommendation  for  the 
further  study  of  that  subject  by  all  the  Govern- 
ments, its  other  work,  being  of  the  minor  and 
technical  character  already  indicated,  might 
perhaps  have  been  as  well  accomplished  by  diplo- 
matic correspondence.  The  fame  of  the  Confer- 
ence, therefore,  must  and  will  safely  rest  upon  the 
great  work  which  it  did  accomplish  by  the  conven- 
tion, unanimously  agreed  upon  for  the  peaceful 
adjustment  of  international  differences,  and  espe- 
cially because  it  conveyed  to  the  world  the  united 
views  of  all  the  assembled  Nations  upon  the  wis- 
dom and  expediency  of  arbitration  as  a  substitute 
for  war,  and  because  of  the  creation  by  it  of  the 
first  international  court  to  carry  that  principle 
into  effective  operation. 


20  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

It  must  be  remembered  that  prior  to  the  meet- 
ing of  this  Conference,  there  had  been  no  general 
agreement  of  the  Nations,  tacit  or  expressed, 
upon  these  subjects,  and  no  international  law  of 
an  expressed  and  defined  character  which  regu- 
lated them.  Nor  must  it  be  forgotten  that  the 
Conference  itself  was  not  a  congress  capable  of 
deciding,  by  the  vote  of  the  majority,  like  a 
parliament  or  legislative  body,  any  question  that 
came  before  it,  but  simply  an  assemblage  of  the 
representatives  of  the  Nations  enrolled  for  the 
purpose  of  deliberating  upon  all  subjects  sub- 
mitted to  it,  and,  so  far  as  they  unanimously 
agreed,  of  establishing  rules  which  should  govern 
the  conduct  of  the  Nations  concerned,  and  that 
the  indirect,  as  well  as  the  direct,  influence  of  its 
action  upon  the  world's  affairs  would  be,  so  far 
as  they  did  unanimously  agree,  of  an  important 
and  effective  character. 

Prior  to  this  date,  it  had  been  left  to  the  dis- 
cretion of  each  Nation,  or  of  any  two  or  more 
nations  by  agreement,  to  act  at  their  own  risk; 
and  the  signal  merit  of  the  Conference  of  1899 
is  that  by  unanimous  consent,  it  laid  down  rules 
for  the  conduct  of  all  the  Nations  composing  it. 
thereby  declaring  their  common  will,  and  that  it 
established  an  international  court  which  should 


THE  FIRST  CONFERENCE  21 

act  by  their  united  authority,  and  under  a  form 
of  procedure  to  be  followed,  unless  modified  by 
special  agreement  of  the  parties. 

Preliminarily,  the  signatory  Powers  did  ex- 
pressly agree  to  use  their  best  efforts  to  insure 
the  pacific  settlement  of  international  differ- 
ences,23 and  in  case  of  serious  disagreement  or 
conflict,  before  an  appeal  to  arms,  they  agreed  to 
have  recourse,  as  far  as  circumstances  allowed, 
to  the  good  offices  and  mediation  of  one  or  more 
friendly  powers.24 

They  also  agreed  that,  independently  of  this 
recourse,  the  signatory  Powers  considered  it  use- 
ful that  one  or  more  powers,  strangers  to  the 
dispute,  should  of  their  own  initiative  and  as  far 
as  circumstances  would  allow,  offer  their  good 
offices  or  mediation  to  the  states  at  variance.25 

It  was  also  agreed  that  good  offices  and  media- 
tion, whether  offered  at  the  request  of  the  parties 
at  variance,  or  upon  the  initiative  of  powers 
who  were  strangers  to  the  dispute,  should  have 
exclusively  the  character  of  advice  and  never 
have  binding  force,  and  that  unless  otherwise 
agreed,  the  acceptance  of  mediation  should  not 
have  the  effect  of  interrupting,  delaying  or  hin- 
dering measures  of  preparation  for  war,  and,  if 
mediation  occurred  after  the  commencement  of 


22 

hostilities,  it  should  cause  no  interruption  to  the 
military  operations  in  progress  unless  otherwise 
agreed.26 

An  entirely  novel  and  singular  recommendation 
was  agreed  upon  for  special  mediation,  by  which, 
in  case  of  serious  differences  endangering  the 
peace,  the  states  at  variance  should  each  choose 
another  power  to  be  its  second,  as  it  were,  with 
the  object  of  preventing  the  rupture  of  pacific  re- 
lations, and  that  for  the  term  of  not  exceeding 
thirty  days,  the  states  in  conflict  should  cease 
from  all  direct  communications  upon  the  subject 
of  the  dispute,  which  is  to  be  regarded  as  having 
been  referred  exclusively  to  the  seconds,  who  shall 
use  their  best  efforts  to  settle  the  controversy, 
and  in  the  case  of  a  definite  rupture  of  pacific 
relations,  these  powers  acting  as  seconds  remain 
charged  with  the  joint  duty  of  taking  advantage 
of  every  opportunity  to  restore  peace.27 

It  will  be  observed  how  gradual  and  tentative 
and  delicate  all  these  agreements  and  recommen- 
dations were,  and  necessarily  so,  to  secure  the 
unanimous  vote  that  was  necessary  for  their 
adoption.  Mediation  had  occurred  before  in 
many  instances  and  had  averted  war,  and  in  one 
case,  at  any  rate,  it  had  been  successful  after  a 
proposal  for  arbitration  had  failed.  It  is  stated 


THE  FIRST  CONFERENCE  23 

on  the  highest  authority  that  "in  1844,  when  war 
between  Spain  and  Morocco  was  threatened  by 
reason  of  the  frequent  raids  by  the  inhabitants  of 
the  Rif  on  the  Spanish  settlement  of  Ceuta,  Spain 
declined  arbitration  on  the  ground  that  her  rights 
were  too  clear  for  argument.  But  both  she  and 
Morocco  subsequently  accepted  joint  mediation  at 
the  hands  of  Great  Britain  and  France."28 

In  the  very  spirit,  also,  of  the  recommendations 
made  by  the  Conference  of  1899,  was  the  action 
of  President  Roosevelt,  in  bringing  together  the 
Russian  and  Japanese  Governments  and  inducing 
them  to  appoint  representatives  to  discuss  terms 
of  peace,  at  what  appeared  to  be  the  very  height 
of  their  terrible  warfare.  Whether  it  came  within 
his  constitutional  functions  as  President  has  been 
a  subject  of  much  discussion,  but  if  it  is  to  be 
regarded  as  an  exercise  of  individual  power,  it 
demonstrates  the  immense  prestige  of  his  name 
and  personality  at  that  time,  and  was,  in  my  judg- 
ment, one  of  the  most  splendid  and  beneficent 
acts  in  his  career.  If  the  correspondence  which 
passed  between  him  and  the  contending  parties 
should  ever  become  public,  it  would,  I  think, 
appear  that  his  action  was  most  effective,  not 
only  in  bringing  the  parties  together  to  discuss 
the  terms  of  peace,  but  also  in  reconciling  their 


24  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

minds  to  the  terms  of  settlement  actually  agreed 
upon.29 

The  provision  for  special  mediation,  to  which 
I  have  referred  and  likened  to  the  appointment 
of  seconds  by  parties  meditating  a  duel  under  the 
old  code  of  honor,  was  the  suggestion  of  the  Sec- 
retary of  the  American  Delegation,  Mr.  Frederick 
W.  Holls,  who,  however,  disavowed  the  original 
conception  of  it,  and  gave  the  credit  for  it  to 
Lord  Russell  of  Killowen  and  previous  authori- 
ties. This  provision  has  been  very  highly  com- 
mended, as  restraining  those  personal  and  national 
passions  and  prejudices  by  which  a  growing  con- 
troversy is  rapidly  embittered,  and  as  meeting  the 
difficulty  which  often  occurs  in  arbitration  of 
choosing  a  referee  or  umpire  satisfactory  to  both 
parties.  Mediation  will  doubtless  be  often  re- 
sorted to  in  the  case  of  future  wars  or  threaten- 
ings  of  war,  in  imitation  of  the  successful 
example  set  by  President  Roosevelt,  and  although 
it  will  in  all  cases  be  necessarily  simply  advisory 
and  not  binding,  in  the  growing  trend  of  public 
opinion  for  the  prevention  of  unnecessary  wars, 
the  advice  of  a  first-class  power  friendly  to  both 
the  contesting  or  threatening  powers  will  neces- 
sarily have  great  effect. 

Why  Italy,  which,  with  Turkey,  was  a  willing 


25 

party  to  the  Conference  of  1899  and  to  its  agree- 
ments and  recommendations,  entered  upon  its 
predatory  and  apparently  barbarous  attack  upon 
Turkey  in  the  invasion  and  seizure  and  formal 
annexation  of  Tripoli,  without  any  attempt  at 
mediation  or  arbitration,  and  why  it  is  that  the 
other  nations  of  Europe,  who  were  also  parties 
to  the  Conference  and  to  its  agreements  and  rec- 
ommendations, refrained,  if  they  did  so,  from 
offering  good  offices  or  mediation,  are  questions 
which  at  this  distance  and  for  lack  of  sufficient 
information,  we  are  perhaps  not  able  to  judge,  but 
which  the  nations  themselves  will  have  to  answer 
at  the  bar  of  history. 

Certainly,  so  far  as  made  known  by  the 
Foreign  Secretary  of  the  Italian  Government,  in 
his  published  assignment  of  grievances,  there 
were  none  which  could  not  have  been  readily  dis- 
posed of  by  arbitration,  and  we  are  yet  to  learn 
of  any  reasonable  justification  for  this  one-sided 
war.  "Might  makes  right"  is  undoubtedly  the 
motto  upon  which  various  nations  have  acted  in 
appropriating  different  portions  of  the  African 
coast,  justifying  their  conduct  by  the  so-called 
promotion  of  the  cause  of  civilization,  and  this 
was  doubtless  the  example  which  Italy  pre- 
tended to  follow.  But  the  time  is  coming,  and 


26  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

surely  not  far  distant,  when  the  public  opinion 
of  the  nations  will  cease  to  uphold  or  justify 
that  rule.  Turkey  had  been  active  in  both  of 
the  Hague  Conferences,  and  had  been  recognized 
as  an  equal  power  vested  with  complete  and 
perfect  nationality  and  equal  sovereignty,  and  en- 
titled to  be  treated  as  a  civilized  nation,  and  not  to 
be  classed  with  African  aborigines  as  a  fair  prey 
for  the  spoiler.  And  certainly,  if  Turkey  had  had 
a  powerful  navy,  this  last  and  saddest  incident  in 
modern  history  would  never  have  occurred.30 

The  avoidance  of  war  and  of  the  terrible  war 
of  which  the  two  greatest  nations  of  Europe  to- 
day were  on  the  very  brink  only  in  August  1911, 
is  demonstration  to  my  mind  of  the  mighty  pres- 
sure of  public  opinion,  in  favor  of  the  peaceful 
settlement  of  international  differences.  It  was 
that  decent  regard  for  the  opinion  of  mankind, 
to  which  nations  as  well  as  men  are  bound  to  ac- 
count for  their  conduct,  that,  led  one  or  both  of 
the  parties  to  the  difference  to  make  the  conces- 
sions that  were  necessary  to  avoid  a  war,  which 
would  have  deluged  the  world  in  blood.  The 
event  only  shows  how  necessary  it  is,  with  all  our 
might,  by  every  possible  means,  to  strengthen 
this  same  pressure  of  public  opinion.  Without 
knowing  all  the  details,  it  may  well  be  permitted 


THE  FIRST  CONFERENCE  27 

to  us  to  inquire,  whether  there  was  anything  in 
the  disputes  involved  in  that  quarrel,  which  might 
not  have  been  disposed  of  by  mediation  and 
arbitration.31 

The  institution  by  the  Conference  of  Commis- 
sions of  Inquiry  to  ascertain  and  report  to  the 
respective  parties  to  a  war  or  to  a  difference 
threatening  war,  the  actual  facts  where  there  is 
a  difference  of  opinion  on  the  matter  of  fact,  was 
a  very  important  piece  of  work  achieved  by  the 
Conference,  the  object  being  to  facilitate  the  so- 
lution of  the  differences  by  elucidating  the  facts 
by  means  of  an  impartial  and  conscientious  in- 
vestigation. The  plan  recommended  requires  that 
"upon  the  inquiry,  both  sides  shall  be  heard ;  that 
the  powers  in  dispute  agree  to  supply  the  Inter- 
national Commission  of  Inquiry,  as  fully  as  they 
may  consider  it  possible,  with  all  means  and 
facilities  necessary  to  enable  it  to  arrive  at  a 
complete  acquaintance  and  correct  understanding 
of  the  facts  in  question;"  that  their  report  shall 
be  signed  by  all  the  members  of  the  Commission 
and  "shall  be  limited  to  a  statement  of  the  facts, 
and  shall  in  no  way  have  the  character  of  an 
arbitral  award,"  but  "leaves  the  powers  in  con- 
troversy freedom  as  to  the  effect  to  be  given  to 
such  statement."82 


28  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

At  first  blush,  the  institution  of  these  Commis- 
sions of  Inquiry  would  not  seem  to  be  of  very 
great  importance  or  effect,  but,  in  reality,  they  are 
signally  useful.  When  such  a  quarrel  breaks  out, 
or  is  already  in  progress,  there  immediately  arises 
an  acute  and  violent  dispute  about  questions  of 
fact.  The  ever  present  and  ever  vigilant  repre- 
sentatives of  the  press  of  all  nations  take  it  up, 
and  are  very  likely  to  take  sides,  and  to  attempt 
to  determine  in  advance  the  facts  of  the  case. 
The  parties  too,  from  their  different  points  of 
view,  may  wholly  mistake  the  actual  facts  of  the 
situation,  and  in  such  a  condition  of  things,  if 
the  facts  can  be  ascertained  by  persons  enjoying 
the  mutual  confidence  of  the  parties  to  the  dis- 
pute, and  jointly  appointed  by  them,  the  quarrel 
may  be  settled  at  once  and  altogether. 

Take  the  case  of  the  Maine,  for  instance,  the 
destruction  of  which,  by  an  explosion  in  the  har- 
bor of  Havana,  in  the  year  1898  was  the  occasion, 
but  not  the  cause,  of  our  war  with  Cuba.  It  is 
quite  possible  that  that  war,  with  all  its  momentous 
consequences,  might  have  been  avoided  and  peace 
preserved,  if  such  a  Commission  of  Inquiry,  in 
which  both  parties  joined,  had  been  resorted  to. 

As  it  was,  each  party  investigated  the  facts  by 
itself  on  one-sided  evidence,  without  hearing  the 


THE  FIRST  CONFERENCE  29 

other  side  at  all,  and,  of  course,  they  came  to  di- 
rectly opposite  conclusions.  But  if,  immediately 
upon  the  happening  of  the  event,  a  Commission 
enjoying  the  mutual  confidence  of  the  parties,  had 
taken  the  affair  in  hand,  and  ascertained,  after 
hearing  both  parties  and  all  the  evidence  that 
each  could  furnish,  and  had  reported  the  actual 
facts,  about  which  there  now  seems  to  be  no  room 
for  dispute,  a  delay  certainly  would  have  been 
interposed,  and  time  allowed  for  thought  and 
for  further  diplomatic  interchange  of  views. 
Quite  possibly  large  concessions  would  have  been 
made,  which  would  have  had  the  actual  result  of 
preventing  the  war  altogether,  and  winning  for 
Cuba  the  independence  which  Spain  seems  to 
have  been  at  last  ready  to  grant,  rather  than 
resort  to  the  terrible  consequences  of  war.33 

But  there  is  an  actual  illustration  in  a  striking 
historical  incident,  which  demonstrates  the  great 
utility  of  these  Commissions  of  Inquiry  recom- 
mended by  this  very  Conference. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  while  the  terrible 
war  between  Russia  and  Japan  was  in  progress, 
the  Russian  fleet,  in  making  its  way  down  the 
North  Sea  to  the  ultimate  scene  of  conflict  and  of 
its  own  destruction,  came  unexpectedly  upon  a 
group  of  English  fishing  vessels,  and  mistaking 


3o  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

them  for  Japanese  craft  of  war,  it  fired  upon 
them  and  committed  wholly  unjustifiable  damage 
and  destruction.  For  the  moment  Great  Britain 
seemed  likely  to  be  drawn  into  the  conflict  as  a 
power  seriously  aggrieved,  without  warrant  by 
one  of  the  combatants,  but  Russia  and  Great 
Britain  had  warmly  supported  the  convention  ar- 
rived at  by  the  Conference  of  1899  for  these 
Commissions  of  Inquiry.  Without  much  diffi- 
culty they  agreed  upon  such  a  Commission  of 
Inquiry  and  joined  not  only  in  appointing  its 
members,  but  in  facilitating  it  by  furnishing  it 
with  all  possible  knowledge  on  either  side.  The 
result  was  that  in  a  short  time,  the  Commission 
ascertained  and  determined  the  facts,  and  that  the 
whole  fault  grew  out  of  the  mistake  of  those  in 
command  of  the  Russian  fleet.  They  reported  the 
facts  and  ascertained  the  damages,  which  were 
promptly  satisfied  by  the  Government  of  Russia.34 
It  is  easy  to  imagine  that  similar  instances  will 
be  constantly  occurring  in  peace  and  in  war,  which 
can  readily  be  arranged  in  this  way  without  a  re- 
sort to  hostilities.  Indeed,  it  was  argued  by  the 
friends  of  the  measure  before  the  Committee  of 
the  Conference  that  had  charge  of  working  it  out, 
that  these  Commissions  would  in  the  future  prob- 
ably be  resorted  to  with  far  greater  frequency 


THE  FIRST  CONFERENCE  31 

than  arbitration  itself.  As  was  very  wisely  said 
by  one  of  its  advocates:  "For  practical  pur- 
poses I  expect  that  we  shall  use  the  international 
Commissions  d'Enquete  nine  times  for  once  that 
we  shall  use  the  permanent  court  of  arbitration 
in  any  questions  of  serious  importance.  The 
difficulty  of  securing  an  impartial  investigation 
of  the  dispute  is,  that  when  it  is  most  needed, 
the  disputants  are  in  the  worst  possible  mood 
to  assent  to  it.  They  are  distrustful,  angry,  and 
inclined  to  believe  the  worst  of  everybody  and 
everything:  to  ask  disputants  in  such  a  temper 
to  agree  to  refer  their  dispute  to  an  international 
court  of  investigation  is  to  secure  an  almost 
certain  refusal  if  you  ask  them  at  the  same  time 
to  bind  themselves  to  accept  whatever  the  court 
or  commission  may  decide."35 

And  it  was  therefore  very  wisely  provided  that 
the  report  of  the  Commission  should  be  regarded 
as  advisory  and  not  binding  upon  either  party. 
But  a  report  of  disinterested  parties  mutually  se- 
lected making  the  facts  clear,  is  very  certain  to 
have  great  weight  in  putting  a  stop  to  the  quarrel, 
as  was  proved  in  the  case  of  Great  Britain  and 
Russia. 

And  now  we  come  to  what  is  confessedly  the 
greatest  achievement  of  this  First  Conference  at 


32 

The  Hague,  distinguishing  it  from  all  previous 
and  subsequent  conferences,  namely,  the  actual 
establishment  by  the  unanimous  consent  and  ap- 
proval of  all  the  Nations  engaged  of  a  permanent 
International  Court  of  Arbitration,  to  which  all 
the  signatory  Powers  might  and  probably  would 
resort  for  a  settlement  of  their  differences  which 
could  not  be  adjusted  by  diplomatic  negotiations, 
and  were  not  of  a  character  justifying  or  compel- 
ling war. 

In  approaching  the  question  of  the  establish- 
ment of  this  Court,  which  had  come  to  be  re- 
garded as  the  most  important  piece  of  work  that 
the  Conference  could  accomplish,  the  Nations  at- 
tending unanimously  committed  themselves  to 
certain  articles  of  agreement  on  the  general  sub- 
ject of  arbitral  justice,  which  were  of  great 
significance,  as,  for  instance,  that  international 
arbitration  has  for  its  object  the  determination  of 
controversies  between  states  by  judges  of  their 
own  choice  upon  the  basis  of  respect  for  law.30 

Everybody  knows  that  from  time  immemorial, 
arbitrations  have  not  been  particularly  celebrated 
for  respect  for  law  or  for  proceedings  upon  the 
basis  of  such  respect,  but  have  been  generally  the 
vehicles  of  compromise  and  division  of  the  mat- 
ter in  dispute  between  the  parties  on  some  arbi- 


THE  FIRST  CONFERENCE 


33 


trary  basis.  But  here,  for  the  first  time,  it  was 
unanimously  agreed  that  respect  for  law  must  be 
fundamental  in  all  international  arbitration. 

Again,  it  was  declared  that  in  questions  of  a 
judicial  character  and  especially  in  questions  re- 
garding the  interpretation  or  application  of  inter- 
national treaties  or  conventions,  arbitration  is 
recognized  by  the  signatory  Powers  as  the  most 
efficacious  and,  at  the  same  time,  the  most  equi- 
table method  of  deciding  controversies  which 
have  not  been  settled  by  diplomatic  methods.37 
There  had  never  before  been  any  such  formal 
and  universal  utterance  as  this  concurred  in  by 
twenty-six  Nations. 

War  had  been,  from  the  beginning,  the  normal 
condition  of  the  world,  interrupted  by  fitful  in- 
tervals of  peace,  but  now  we  are  coming  in  sight 
of  the  new  doctrine, — the  American  doctrine,  as 
it  may  well  be  called — that  peace  is  and  shall  be 
the  normal  condition  of  mankind,  and  that  war 
is  only  an  occasional  incident  interrupting  and  dis- 
turbing it,  for  now  all  nations  agree  that  arbitra- 
tion is  the  most  efficacious  and  equitable  method 
of  deciding  controversies  which  have  not  been 
capable  of  settlement  by  diplomatic  methods. 

Again,  it  was  declared  that  the  agreement  of 
arbitration  implies  the  obligation  to  submit  in 


34  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

good  faith  to  the  decision  of  the  arbitral  tri- 
bunal.38 This  agreement,  unanimous  like  the 
others  referred  to,  put  in  concrete  and  express 
form,  in  a  convention  solemnly  agreed  to  by  all 
the  leading  nations  of  the  world,  what  had  been 
before  a  floating  and  indefinite  understanding 
among  men,  and  finally  disposed  of  the  notion 
that  if  nations  went  into  an  arbitration,  there  was 
no  sanction  that  made  the  award  of  the  arbitra- 
tors binding,  much  less  enforceable. 

Indeed,  in  regard  to  the  whole  work  of  the 
Conference,  it  is  still  occasionally  insisted  that 
there  is  no  sanction  to  the  judgments  of  the  per- 
manent Court  of  Arbitration  established  by  it; 
that  there  is  no  international  army  and  navy,  no 
international  executive  power  to  compel  obe- 
dience to  such  decrees.  But  here  we  have  what 
may  be  regarded  as  the  common  judgment  of 
mankind  expressed  in  the  most  solemn  manner  in 
which  an  international  engagement  between  na- 
tions is  capable  of  expression,  that  henceforth,  in 
obedience  to  the  public  opinion  of  all  nations,  the 
contending  parties  shall  submit  in  good  faith  to 
the  decision  of  the  arbitral  tribunal. 

The  people  and  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  had  always  been  in  favor  of  arbitration  as 
a  substitute  for  war,  and  had  long  advocated  the 


THE  FIRST  CONFERENCE  35 

establishment  of  such  a  tribunal,  and  the  propo- 
sition for  its  creation  by  the  Conference  was 
therefore  hailed  by  their  representatives  as  their 
chief  object  in  coming  to  the  Conference.39  It 
must  be  also  admitted  that  the  Government  of 
Great  Britain  had  cordially  shared  this  view,  and 
one  is  not  surprised,  therefore,  to  learn  that  the 
honor  of  introducing  the  plan  of  such  a  court  in 
the  Conference  happily  belongs  to  the  late  Lord 
Pauncefote,  who  did  so  much  for  the  mainte- 
nance of  friendly  relations  between  his  own  coun- 
try and  ours  during  his  long  term  as  Ambassador 
at  Washington.40 

Russia  also  proposed  a  plan  and  our  own  Dele- 
gation a  third  plan,  but  these  two  Powers  agreed 
that  the  British  plan  should  be  the  basis  of  the 
deliberations  of  the  Conference. 

The  discussions  which  resulted  in  the  perfect- 
ing of  the  plan  that  was  finally  adopted  and  found 
its  place  in  the  Final  Act  of  the  Conference,  were 
most  protracted  and  able  and  interesting.  At 
one  point,  however,  the  whole  scheme  came  near 
being  shipwrecked,  when  the  leading  representa- 
tive of  Germany  took  the  floor  and  opposed  the 
whole  idea  of  a  permanent  tribunal,  as  one  to 
which  Germany  could  never  consent.  His  Gov- 
ernment, he  said,  regarded  it  as  an  innovation  of 


36  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

a  most  radical  character,  and  while  it  was  a  most 
generous  project,  it  could  not  be  realized  without 
bearing  with  it  great  risks  and  even  great  dangers, 
which  it  was  simple  prudence  to  recognize,  and 
that,  in  the  opinion  of  his  Government,  the  plan 
for  a  permanent  international  tribunal  was  at 
least  premature.  "Not  yet,  not  yet,"  I  think  it 
may  well  be  said,  has  been  the  general  attitude  of 
Germany  on  all  such  questions. 

When  the  German  objections  against  a  Perma- 
nent Court  of  Arbitration  in  any  form  had 
brought  the  discussion  to  a  halt,  time  was  allowed 
for  Professor  Zorn,  the  distinguished  delegate 
who  had  maintained  the  discussion  for  Germany, 
to  go  to  Berlin  and  lay  the  whole  matter  before 
the  Foreign  Office,  then  under  the  'direction  of 
von  Biilow,  as  Secretary  of  State  and  after- 
wards Imperial  Chancellor,  who  seems  to  have 
been  an  ardent  friend  of  arbitration.  At  any 
rate,  the  objection  of  Germany  was  waived  upon 
what  seems  to  have  been  an  understanding  that 
any  effort  to  make  the  resort  to  arbitration  or  to 
the  permanent  court  obligatory  would  not  be  in- 
sisted upon,  and  from  the  time  of  the  return  of 
Professor  Zorn  to  The  Hague  with  this  result  of 
his  mission,  Germany  took  a  cordial  and  active 
part  in  the  discussion,  and  voted  with  the  rest  for 
the  establishment  of  the  Court. 


THE  FIRST  CONFERENCE  37 

It  is  always  necessary,  in  considering  the  work 
of  this  Conference,  to  remember  the  absolute  ne- 
cessity controlling  it  at  every  moment,  in  order 
to  attain  the  end  of  absolute  unanimity,  to  weigh 
every  word  in  every  article  proposed,  in  order  to 
meet  any  objection  that  might  be  interposed  from 
any  quarter,  and  that  this  was  the  first  attempt  at 
the  establishment  of  such  a  tribunal.  In  view  of 
these  difficulties,  the  result  obtained  was  a  marvel- 
ous success,  as  it  led  the  way  for  great  and  con- 
stant advances  in  the  future,  and  pointed  out  the 
road  in  which  future  conferences,  as  well  as  fu- 
ture diplomacy,  should  follow. 

It  was  only  on  the  26th  of  May  that  Lord 
Pauncefote  presented  his  proposition,  and  on  the 
29th  of  July  the  Conference  ended  by  the  formal 
signing  of  the  final  act,  by  which  the  Court  was 
established. 

Although  entitled  "The  Permanent  Court  of 
Arbitration,"  it  was  permanent  only  in  one  sense, 
and  that  was  in  the  composition  of  the  jurists, 
from  the  list  of  whom  the  arbitrators  or  judges 
who  were  to  act  in  each  case  as  it  arose  should 
be  selected  by  the  parties.41  There  was  also  es- 
tablished a  Permanent  International  Bureau  at 
The  Hague  to  serve  as  the  record  office  for  the 
Court,  be  the  medium  of  all  communications 
relating  to  it,  and  have  the  custody  of  its 


38 

archives  and  the  conduct  of  all  administrative 
business.42  Each  of  the  signatory  Powers  was 
to  select,  and  they  did  select,  not  more  than  four 
persons  of  recognized  competence  in  questions 
of  international  law,  enjoying  the  highest  moral 
reputation  and  disposed  to  accept  the  duties  of 
arbitrators.  The  persons  thus  selected  were  en- 
rolled as  members  of  the  Court,  and  appointed 
for  a  term  of  six  years,  to  be  succeeded  by  other 
appointments  in  case  of  death  or  resignation.43 
The  jurisdiction  of  this  Court  was  declared  to 
extend  to  all  cases  of  arbitration,  unless  there 
should  be  an  agreement  between  the  parties  for 
the  establishment  of  a  special  tribunal.44  The 
sessions  were  to  be  held  at  The  Hague ;  in  case  of 
necessity,  the  place  of  session  might  be  changed 
by  the  Court  only  with  the  assent  of  the  parties,45 
elaborate  rules  of  arbitral  procedure  were  also 
agreed  upon  for  proceedings  in  the  Court.46 

A  permanent  Administrative  Council  was  also 
established  to  supervise  the  organization  of  the 
Bureau,  which  should  remain  under  the  direction 
and  control  of  this  Council,  to  be  composed  of  the 
diplomatic  representatives  of  the  signatory  Pow- 
ers accredited  to  The  Hague.47 

I  have  said  that  the  indirect  results  of  the 
Conference  were  quite  as  important  as  the  direct 


THE  FIRST  CONFERENCE  39 

results  embodied  in  the  Final  Act,  and  Mr.  White 
well  sums  it  up,  so  far  as  regards  its  effect  upon 
the  law  of  nations,  when  he  says : 

"There  is  also  another  gain, — incidental,  but  of 
real  and  permanent  value ;  and  this  is  the  inevita- 
ble development  of  the  law  of  nations  by  the 
decisions  of  such  a  Court  of  Arbitration  composed 
of  the  most  eminent  jurists  from  all  countries. 
Thus  far  it  has  been  evolved  from  the  writings 
of  scholars  often  conflicting,  from  the  decisions 
of  national  courts  biased  by  local  patriotism, 
from  the  practices  of  various  Powers,  on  land 
and  sea,  more  in  obedience  to  their  interests  than 
to  their  sense  of  justice;  but  now  we  may  hope 
for  the  growth  of  a  great  body  of  international 
law  under  the  best  conditions  possible,  and  ever 
more  and  more  in  obedience  to  the  great  impulse 
given  by  Grotius  in  the  direction  of  right  reason 
and  mercy."48 

There  have  already  been  many  resorts  by  Na- 
tions, who  found  themselves  in  dispute,  ourselves 
among  the  foremost,  to  this  Permanent  Court, 
whose  administration  of  justice  has  been  most  sat- 
isfactory, and  tends  directly  in  the  direction  of  the 
evolution  of  true  international  law,  as  prophesied 
by  Mr.  White.49  But  there  is  another  indirect 
result  of  the  establishment  of  the  Court  accom- 


40  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

panied,  as  it  was,  by  the  common  agreement  of 
all  the  Nations  concerned  in  creating  it,  that 
arbitration  was  the  best  and  most  expedient 
method  of  deciding  international  controversies. 
The  result  has  been  that  since  the  adjournment 
of  the  Conference,  arbitrations  and  treaties  of 
arbitration,  almost  without  number,  have  occurred 
between  different  Nations  who  were  parties  to 
it,  and  there  has  been  an  almost  universal  con- 
census of  opinion,  not  only  among  jurists  and 
statesmen,  but  among  intelligent  men  of  all  coun- 
tries, that  arbitration  should  be  resorted  to  before 
a  resort  to  force  is  tried. 

More  than  one  hundred  and  forty-four  stand- 
ing arbitration  treaties  have  been  concluded  since 
the  First  Hague  Conference.50  Besides  these, 
there  have  been  concluded  within  recent  years  a 
large  number  of  conventions,  which,  although  they 
have  not  for  their  direct  object  the  assuring  of 
peace,  yet  tend  very  strongly  to  contract  the  area 
of  possible  difficulties.  An  illustration  of  conven- 
tions of  this  character  is  to  be  found  in  the  Postal 
Union,51  of  which  type  there  are  already  more 
than  forty-five  in  existence.  In  addition  to  the 
standing  arbitration  treaties  and  the  conventions 
similar  in  character  to  the  Postal  Union,  there 
have  been,  in  the  course  of  the  century  before  the 


THE  FIRST  CONFERENCE  41 

First  Hague  Conference  and  since  its  adjourn- 
ment, hundreds  of  arbitrations  between  different 
nations  for  the  peaceful  settlement  of  disputes.52' 

If  we  look  back  upon  the  practical  progress 
made  by  the  Peace  movement  during  the  twenty- 
five  years  ending  with  the  Conference  of  1899, 
we  find  that  an  astonishing  change  has  taken 
place  in  the  attitude  of  public  men,  as  well  as 
private  citizens,  throughout  the  world  on  the  sub- 
ject. Twenty  years  ago  the  Peace  movement  and 
its  advocates  were  held  in  very  light  esteem,  and 
were  more  frequently  the  object  of  ridicule  than 
of  any  serious  consideration,  but  they  have  cer- 
tainly had  a  substantial  effect  upon  public  opin- 
ion, which,  in  the  end,  must  govern  all  the  great 
transactions  of  the  world.  We  may  safely  com- 
pare its  progress  with  that  of  other  great  moral 
reforms  which  have  at  first  been  received  with 
contempt,  but  which  in  time  have  mastered  the 
national  conscience,  and,  if  I  may  say  so,  the 
international  conscience  as  well. 

It  was  in  1789  that  Wilberforce  made  his  ad- 
mirable speech  in  the  House  of  Commons,  intro- 
ducing resolutions  which  were  intended  as  a  basis 
for  the  future  abolition  of  the  slave  trade,  that  in 
1807,  was  put  an  end  to,  so  far  as  the  British 
dominions  were  concerned.  The  Constitution  of 


42  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

the  United  States  had  recognized  and  permitted 
this  horrible  traffic  until  January,  1808.  At  the 
Congress  of  Vienna  in  1814,  the  principle  was 
acknowledged  that  the  slave  trade  should  be  abol- 
ished as  soon  as  possible,  but  it  was  left  for  sep- 
arate negotiation  between  the  Powers  as  to  the 
limit  of  time  within  which  this  should  take  place. 
By  the  treaty  of  Ghent  in  1814,  the  United  States 
and  England  mutually  bound  themselves  to  do  all 
in  their  power  to  extinguish  the  traffic,  and  by  the 
Ashburton  treaty  in  1842,  Great  Britain  and  the 
United  States  actually  made  provision  for  the 
joint  maintenance  of  squadrons  on  the  west  coast 
of  Africa  for  its  suppression,  each  Nation  to 
maintain  a  squadron  of  at  least  eighty  guns 
for  that  purpose,  and  the  two  Governments 
agreed  to  unite  in  an  effort  to  persuade  other 
Powers  to  close  all  slave  markets  within  their 
territories. 

Thus,  in  the  short  space  of  fifty  years,  that 
great  moral  reform,  sustained  by  the  universal 
public  conscience,  was  brought  about  and  the  in- 
famous traffic,  which,  at  the  beginning  of  that 
period,  had  been  generally  tolerated,  was  pro- 
nounced, by  the  common  judgment  of  the  world, 
in  law,  as  it  always  had  been  in  fact,  a  crime  of 
the  first  magnitude. 


THE  FIRST  CONFERENCE  43 

So,  as  to  domestic  slavery,  the  life  of  a  single 
man,  William  Lloyd  Garrison,  who  died  at  the 
age  of  seventy-four,  was  long  enough  to  bring 
about  its  complete  and  final  abolition  in  the  United 
States.  It  was  not  until  January,  1831,  that  he 
started,  without  a  dollar  of  capital  and  without  a 
single  subscriber,  the  publication  of  "The  Liber- 
ator," bearing  the  motto:  "Our  country  is  the 
world;  our  countrymen  are  mankind."  Amid 
the  almost  universal  execration  which  was  show- 
ered upon  him  in  the  North  as  well  as  the  South, 
he  persisted  in  his  demand  for  immediate  emanci- 
pation. Even  in  Boston  in  1835,  he  was  dragged 
by  the  mob  through  the  streets  with  a  rope  around 
his  body,  his  life  being  saved  with  great  difficulty 
by  lodging  him  in  jail.  Only  twenty-eight  years 
later,  President  Lincoln  issued  his  proclamation 
of  emancipation,  which  is  universally  regarded  as 
the  greatest  act  in  his  wonderful  career. 

Now,  everybody  knows  that  war,  for  the  settle- 
ment of  international  disputes  which  might  be 
composed  by  arbitration,  is  as  barbarous  and  cruel 
and  wicked  as  the  slave  trade  and  slavery  ever 
were,  and,  like  them,  it  presses  with  the  severest 
hardships  upon  the  lowest  ranks  of  the  com- 
munity, for,  in  every  great  war,  it  is  the  poor  and 
the  laboring  classes  that  suffer  most  from  its 


44 

burdens  and  oppressions,  and  even  in  peace  the 
crushing  expense  of  the  armies  and  navies  falls 
most  heavily  upon  them. 

Thus,  it  seems  to  me  that  there  is  every  reason 
for  encouragement  in  the  progress  made  for  the 
prevention  and  abolition  of  war  as  measures  es- 
sential to  our  complete  civilization.  We  do  not 
delude  ourselves  with  the  idea  that  there  will  be 
no  more  wars,  or  that  talking  or  conferring  or 
arbitrating  will  put  an  end  to  them.  Righteous 
and  necessary  wars  there  may  yet  be,  but  only 
righteous  and  necessary  on  one  side,  like  our  own 
struggle  for  Independence  in  1776,  and  the  life 
and  death  contest  of  1861  for  the  preservation  of 
the  Union  and  the  extirpation  of  Slavery. 

But  the  work  for  Peace  is  going  on  well,  the 
conscience  of  the  world  is  thoroughly  aroused 
and  determined,  and  perhaps  thousands  now  liv- 
ing will  see  the  day  when  war,  as  a  means  of 
settling  international  disputes,  will  be  as  generally 
condemned  as  the  duel  and  slavery  and  the  slave 
trade  are  to-day.  Perhaps  this  also  is  another 
dream!  But  who  can  tell? 

"Blind  unbelief  is  sure  to  err, 

And  scan  His  work  in  vain. 
God  is  his  own  interpreter 
And  He  will  make  it  plain." 


II 

THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE 

Scarcely  had  the  ink  dried  on  the  pens  of  the 
delegates  who  signed  the  Final  Act  of  the  Con- 
ference of  1899,  when  the  terrible  war  broke  out 
between  Great  Britain  and  the  Transvaal,  which 
latter  country  had  not  been  admitted  to  the  Con- 
ference. We  may  not  discuss  here  the  merits  of 
that  protracted  and  destructive  conflict,  which 
ended,  so  far  as  can  now  be  discerned,  in  the 
accomplishment  by  Great  Britain  of  the  object  of 
the  war, — the  establishment  of  her  complete  su- 
premacy in  South  Africa. 

Many  things  have  since  happened  in  that  direc- 
tion which  may  throw  doubts  upon  the  perma- 
nence of  British  supremacy  there.  It  is  true  that 
on  the  ist  of  September,  1900,  the  Transvaal 
was  annexed  to  the  British  Empire  and  the  Boers 
forced  to  accept  British  sovereignty;  new  letters 
patent  instituting  self-government  in  the  Trans- 
vaal were  issued  on  the  I2th  of  September,  1906, 
in  pursuance  of  a  wise  policy  on  the  part  of 
Great  Britain.  But  history  is  not  made  in  a  day 
or  a  decade.  The  union  of  the  South  African 


48 

Republics,  a  federation  of  practically  free  states 
under  the  sovereignty  of  Great  Britain,  appears 
to  be  working  most  satisfactorily  to  both  sides, 
but  it  appears  inevitable  that,  as  time  goes  on, 
the  predominance  of  the  Dutch  element  in  South 
Africa  will  become  more  and  more  marked  and 
powerful,  and,  in  view  of  the  established  policy 
of  Great  Britain  not  to  attempt  to  hold  her  col- 
onies by  force  against  their  will,  the  time  may 
come  when  the  South  African  Republics,  like  our 
American  colonies,  may  set  up  for  themselves  and 
declare  their  independence.  At  any  rate,  per- 
manent peace  seems,  for  the  present,  established 
in  that  quarter  of  the  world. 

But  the  still  more  terrible  war  in  1904,  between 
Russia  and  Japan,  which  seems,  in  its  outcome, 
to  have  had  for  its  ultimate  result,  if  not  for  its 
original  object,  the  division  of  a  great  province 
of  China  between  those  two  powers,  was  even  a 
more  serious  disappointment  to  the  friends  of 
peace  throughout  the  world  than  the  Transvaal 
war  had  been. 

These  two  nations  had  been  members  of  the 
First  Hague  Conference,  and  were  fully  com- 
mitted to  its  peaceful  policies  of  mediation  and 
arbitration  as  a  means  of  settling  international 
disputes,  beyond  the  power  of  diplomacy  to  ad- 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE  49 

just.  But  nevertheless,  the  exhausting  and  de- 
structive progress  of  the  conflict,  which  at  last 
brought  both  parties,  in  a  state  of  exhaustion  and 
in  despair  of  settling  their  dispute  by  war,  to  the 
treaty  of  peace  at  Portsmouth,  had  demonstrated 
the  truth  of  the  prophecies  of  the  Czar  Nicholas 
II  himself  in  his  famous  rescript  of  August  24, 
1898,  as  to  the  fatal  effects  of  great  and  growing 
armaments  upon  the  nations  who  indulged  in  them. 

The  treaty  of  Portsmouth  was  signed  on  the 
5th  of  September,  1905,  and  although  it  did  pro- 
vide for  the  evacuation  of  Manchuria  by  the  con- 
tracting parties,  and  for  the  restoration  entirely 
and  completely  to  China  of  her  exclusive  admin- 
istration of  all  portions  of  Manchuria  then  in  the 
occupation  or  under  the  control  of  Japanese  or 
Russian  troops,  except  the  leased  territory,  and 
although  Japan  and  Russia  engaged  reciprocally 
not  to  obstruct  any  general  measures  common  to 
all  countries  which  China  might  take  for  the  de- 
velopment of  the  commerce  and  industry  of  Man- 
churia, these  promises  were  not  self -executing, 
and  since  that  day  China  seems  to  have  had  a 
very  subordinate  influence  in  that  district,  which 
was  the  seat  of  the  conflict. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  the  First  Peace  Con- 
ference had  assumed  the  certainty  of  another 


50  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

Conference  in  the  not  distant  future,  and  had  re- 
ferred to  such  a  future  Conference  some  of  the 
most  important  questions,  including  the  limita- 
tion of  armaments,  and  the  immunity  of  private 
property  on  the  high  seas,  the  rights  and  duties 
of  neutrals,  and  the  bombardments  of  ports, 
towns  and  villages  by  a  naval  force,  but  had  not 
conferred  upon  any  power  tJhe  exclusive  duty  of 
calling  such  a  Conference.53 

Accordingly,  in  October,  1904,  by  direction  of 
President  Roosevelt,  who  was  inspired  by  the 
appeal  of  the  Inter-Parliamentary  Union  held  in 
St.  Louis  at  the  centennial  celebration  of  the  Lou- 
isiana Purchase,  the  Secretary  of  State,  the  late 
John  Hay,  addressed  a  circular  note  dated  Octo- 
ber 21,  1904,  to  all  signatory  Powers  of  1899, 
suggesting  the  calling  of  the  Second  Conference 
at  an  early  day.  The  President's  overture  was 
favorably  received,  but  the  reply  of  Russia  de- 
ferred the  participation  of  that  Government  until 
the  cessation  of  hostilities  in  the  far  East,  while 
Japan  made  the  reservation  that  no  action  should 
be  taken  by  the  Conference  relative  to  the  war.54 

The  war  having  happily  ended,  the  Emperor  of 
Russia,  as  the  initiator  of  the  First  Conference, 
conveyed  to  the  President  the  suggestion  that 
Russia  was  ready  to  assume  the  responsibility  of 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE  51 

summoning  the  Second  Conference,  to  which  sug- 
gestion the  President,  in  the  true  spirit  of  chiv- 
alry yielded.55 

In  one  respect,  this  courteous  concession  was 
unfortunate,  because  it  resulted  in  continuing, 
through  the  Second  Conference,  the  predominant 
influence  which  had  naturally  been  conceded  to 
Russia  in  the  First.  A  true  World's  Conference 
ought  not  to  be  under  the  control  or  even  the 
leadership  of  any  one  nation,  but  should  reflect 
the  common  spirit  of  at  least  the  principal  na- 
tions of  the  world. 

Through  the  sagacity  and  tact  of  Secretary 
Root,  all  the  nations  of  Central  and  South  Amer- 
ica were  included  in  the  call  for  the  Second  Con- 
ference, instead  of  only  the  United  States  and 
Mexico,  as  had  been  before,  and  thus  the  Second 
Conference,  consisting  of  the  delegates  from 
forty-four  independent  nations,  instead  of  twenty- 
six,  was  in  reality  the  first  World's  Conference 
that  had  ever  been  held.56 

The  letter  of  instructions  of  Secretary  Root 
to  us  who  were  entrusted  with  the  representation 
of  the  nation  at  this  Conference,57  is  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  state  papers  that  has  ever  been 
issued,  remarkable  alike  for  its  lofty  spirit  of 
patriotism  and  for  its  noble  views  of  the  spirit 


52  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

which  should  actuate  all  nations  coming  to  such 
a  conference.58  "In  the  discussion  upon  every 
question,"  he  wrote,  "it  is  important  to  remember 
that  the  object  of  the  Conference  is  agreement, 
and  not  compulsion.  If  such  conferences  are  to 
be  made  occasions  for  trying  to  force  nations  into 
positions  which  they  consider  against  their  inter- 
ests, the  powers  cannot  be  expected  to  send  rep- 
resentatives to  them.  It  is  important,  also  that 
the  agreements  reached  shall  be  genuine  and  not 
reluctant.  Otherwise  they  will  inevitably  fail  to 
receive  approval  when  submitted  for  the  ratifica- 
tion of  the  powers  represented.  Comparison  of 
views  and  frank  and  considerate  explanation  and 
discussion  may  frequently  resolve  doubts,  obviate 
difficulties,  and  lead  to  real  agreement  upon  mat- 
ters which  at  the  outset  have  appeared  insur- 
mountable. It  is  not  wise,  however,  to  carry 
this  process  to  the  point  of  irritation.  After 
reasonable  discussion,  if  no  agreement  is  reached, 
it  is  better  to  lay  the  subject  aside,  or  refer  it 
to  some  future  conference  in  the  hope  that 
intermediate  consideration  may  dispose  of  the 
objections." 

"The  immediate  results  of  such  a  conference 
must  always  be  limited  to  a  small  part  of  the 
field  which  the  more  sanguine  have  hoped  to  see 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE  53 

covered ;  but  each  successive  conference  will  make 
the  positions  reached  in  the  preceding  conference 
its  point  of  departure,  and  will  bring  to  the  con- 
sideration of  further  advances  towards  interna- 
tional agreement,  opinions  affected  by  the  accep- 
tance and  application  of  the  previous  agreements. 
Each  conference  will  inevitably  make  further 
progress  and,  by  successive  steps,  results  may  be 
accomplished  which  have  formerly  appeared 
impossible." 

"You  should  keep  always  in  mind,"  he  fur- 
ther says,  "the  promotion  of  this  continuous  pro- 
cess through  which  the  progressive  development 
of  international  justice  and  peace  may  be  carried 
on;  and  you  should  regard  the  work  of  the  Sec- 
ond Conference,  not  merely  with  reference  to  the 
definite  results  to  be  reached  in  that  Conference, 
but  also  with  reference  to  the  foundations  which 
may  be  laid  for  further  results  in  future  confer- 
ences. It  may  well  be  that  among  the  most 
valuable  services  rendered  to  civilization  by  this 
Second  Conference  will  be  found  the  progress 
made  in  matters  upon  which  the  delegates  reached 
no  definite  agreement." 

It  was  in  this  spirit  that  we  went  to  The  Hague 
and  pressed  upon  the  attention  of  our  colleagues 
from  the  other  forty-three  nations  the  highly  con- 


54  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

structive  and  advanced  measures  which  we  were 
instructed  to  propose.  And  it  will  be  found,  I 
think,  that  the  results  of  our  labors,  indirect  as 
well  as  direct,  measured  by  the  criterion  laid 
down  by  Mr.  Root,  will  prove  to  have  been  of 
very  great  value. 

As  before,  the  organization  of  the  Conference 
was  practically  in  the  hands  of  Russia.  Her 
First  Delegate  was  made  President  of  the  Con- 
ference and  it  was  he  who,  after  consulting  with 
the  representatives  of  other  nations,  appointed 
the  presidents  of  the  several  Commissions  among 
which  the  business  of  the  Conference  was  dis- 
tributed, and  it  was  he,  a  skilled  and  experienced 
diplomatist,  who,  as  President  of  the  Conference, 
was  authorized  to  appear  and  take  part  in  the 
proceedings  of  any  committee  or  sub-committee, 
and  who,  on  all  critical  and  important  occasions, 
availed  himself  of  that  privilege.  Besides  this, 
as  before,  the  State  of  Montenegro  made  the  dele- 
gates of  Russia  its  own,  and  thus  Russia  had  two 
votes  on  every  question  that  came  up,  instead  of 
the  one  of  every  other  nation. 

•  The  composition  of  the  Conference  was  very 
remarkable.  It  embraced  some  twenty-five  of  the 
members  of  the  First  Conference,  who  thus  were 
thoroughly  conversant  with  its  history,  and  in- 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE  55 

eluded  many  distinguished  jurists  from  other  na- 
tions, who  greatly  contributed  to  its  composite 
force  and  influence,  among  whom  the  different 
states  of  South  America  made  valuable  contri- 
butions. 

The  Conference  met  at  The  Hague  on  the  I5th 
of  June,  1907,  and  continued  in  session,  almost 
without  intermission,  until  the  i8th  of  October, 
when  the  Final  Act  was  ready  for  signature. 

As  our  numbers  were  too  large  to  find  con- 
venient accommodation  in  the  classical  "House 
in  the  Woods"  where  the  First  Conference  was 
held,  our  sessions  took  place  in  The  Binnenhof, 
in  the  celebrated  Hall  of  the  Knights,  where  we 
found  ample  room.  The  Binnenhof  was  built  in 
the  1 3th  century  by  William  the  Second,  Count  of 
Holland,  King  of  the  Romans,  and  is  at  present 
used  by  the  States  General  in  joint  session. 

For  some  mysterious  reason  which  I  cannot 
explain,  but  which  probably  grew  out  of  the  then 
very  recent  political  upheaval  in  Great  Britain,  by 
which  the  party  that  had  been  in  power  during 
the  First  Conference  had  become  his  Majesty's 
opposition,  consisting  of  a  powerless  minority, 
the  English  press,  particularly  the  conservative 
press,  was  very  much  disinclined  to  favor  the 
work  of  the  Conference.  The  London  Times, 


56  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

which  continued  at  that  time  to  be  the  great 
organ  of  British  public  opinion,  especially  on  for- 
eign affairs,  was  especially  hostile  to  the  whole 
performance,  constantly  uttering  severe  criti- 
cisms upon  what  was  done  or  not  done,  and 
finally  openly  setting  us  down  as  largely  com- 
posed of  a  group  of  second-class  diplomatists, 
who  were  trying  to  see  how  we  could  best  dupe 
each  other.  To  take  its  own  words,  on  the  7th 
of  October,  it  said : 

"They,  the  members,  have  negotiated  and 
compromised  and  tried  to  dupe  each  other  and 
resorted  to  all  the  little  tricks  and  devices  of  sec- 
ond-class diplomacy;"  and,  again,  on  the  iQth 
of  October,  at  the  close  of  our  deliberations,  it 
said,  in  plain  English : 

"The  Conference  was  a  sham  and  has  brought 
forth  a  progeny  of  shams,  because  it  was  founded 
on  a  sham.  We  do  not  believe  that  any  progress 
whatever  in  the  cause  of  peace,  or  in  the  mitiga- 
tion of  the  evils  of  war,  can  be  accomplished  by 
a  repetition  of  the  strange  and  humiliating  per- 
formance which  has  just  ended." 

But,  in  truth,  the  Conference  was  composed 
of  as  able  and  earnest  a  body  of  public  men  as 
ever  had  assembled  for  any  similar  purpose.  Its 
deliberations  were  conducted  in  the  spirit  of  true 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE  57 

conciliation,  with  uniform  dignity,  and  without 
resort  to  any  of  the  low  arts  suggested  by  the 
Times. 

The  work  which  it  accomplished  was  of  the 
greatest  utility  for  the  advancement  of  the  cause 
of  arbitration  and  peace,  and  the  value  of  that 
work,  like  that  of  the  First  Conference,  has,  in 
the  lapse  of  years,  come  to  be  regarded  as  greater 
and  greater,  in  the  estimation  of  all  those  who  be- 
lieve that  some  better  means  than  war  can  be 
found  for  the  settlement  of  international  disputes. 
So  that  the  comments  of  the  London  Times  may 
be  regarded  as  one  of  those  flagrant  political 
libels,  of  which  even  the  greatest  newspapers  are 
sometimes  guilty. 

Not  only  were  the  Great  Powers  so-called  well 
represented,  but  the  small  powers  were  repre- 
sented in  many  cases  by  very  able  and  interesting 
men.  It  met  at  a  moment  of  profound  and  uni- 
versal peace  which  was  a  good  augury  for  its 
work,  and  it  was  the  first  time  in  the  history  of 
the  world  that  there  had  been  a  conference  of  all 
the  civilized  nations  that  composed  it.  One 
would  have  expected,  in  such  an  assembly,  gath- 
ered from  all  parts  of  the  earth,  composed  of  all 
nations  with  their  various  grades  of  civilization, 
to  find  more  or  less  rough  customers,  but  in  truth 


58  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

it  was  not  so.  Even  the  smallest  nations  were 
represented  by  cultivated,  educated,  able  men, 
who  took  their  fair  share  in  the  earnest  work  of 
the  Conference. 

The  development  of  international  law  only 
proceeds  step  by  step  very  gradually.  It  has 
taken  several  hundred  years  to  bring  it  to  its 
present  imperfect  and  really  undeveloped  con- 
dition, and  it  will  probably  take  a  good  many 
more  conferences,  and  perhaps  a  hundred  years 
more,  before  a  body  of  international  law  is  de- 
veloped, to  which  all  the  nations  of  the  earth  will 
give  their  assent. 

But  the  only  just  way  to  measure  the  work 
that  was  done,  is,  as  it  seems  to  me,  in  regard  to 
each  question,  to  consider  the  position  in  which  it 
stood  when  the  Conference  came  together  and  the 
position  which  it  occupied  when  the  work  of  the 
Conference  was  finished.  Measured  by  that 
standard,  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  on  several 
very  important  questions,  there  were  advances 
made,  and  substantial  progress  which  is  not  to 
be  undone,  and  which  will,  by  and  by,  secure 
for  each  of  the  propositions  which  were  advo- 
cated, whether  they  were  finally  adopted  or  not, 
an  assured  place  in  future  history. 

To  show  this,  I  can  do  no  better  than  to  take 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE  59 

up,  one  by  one,  the  projects  that  were  consid- 
ered, those  that  were  adopted,  and  three  or  four 
of  those  that  were  left  for  future  and  further 
consideration  by  the  nations,  either  by  diplomatic 
interchange  of  views  or  by  future  conference, 
the  latter  being  of  equal  importance  with  the 
former,  because,  as  Mr.  Root  well  said,  in  the 
extract  from  his  instructions  already  quoted,  no 
single  Conference  can  be  expected  to  settle  every 
question  brought  before  it,  but  the  discussion  and 
the  action  taken  may  open  the  way  for  future 
conferences  or  diplomatic  negotiations,  to  carry 
to  a  still  further  advance  and  perhaps  finally  to 
complete  the  work. 

One  most  interesting  proposition  that  was 
adopted,  without  a  dissenting  voice,  after  long 
discussion  and  deliberation,  was  worth  all  the 
trouble  and  cost  of  the  Conference.  I  mean  the 
American  proposition  which  resulted  in  the  con- 
vention by  which  the  contracting  powers  agree 
not  to  have  recourse  to  armed  force  for  the  re- 
covery of  contract  debts  claimed  from  the  gov- 
ernment of  one  country  by  the  government  of 
another  country  as  being  due  to  its  nationals, 
but  that  this  agreement  is  not  applicable  when 
the  debtor  state  refuses  or  neglects  to  reply  to  an 
offer  of  arbitration,  or,  after  accepting  the  offer, 


60  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

of  arbitration,  prevents  any  compromise  from  be- 
ing agreed  upon,  or,  after  the  arbitration,  fails 
to  submit  to  the  award.59 

Here  was  a  final  treaty,  by  which  the  nations 
bound  themselves,  each  to  the  other  and  to  all 
the  world,  not  to  resort  to  force  for  the  collection 
of  contract  debts  due  from  one  nation  to  the  citi- 
zens of  another  nation,  without  first  exhausting 
the  resources  of  arbitration.  Prior  to  this  time, 
it  had  been  deemed  permissible,  in  international 
law,  where  one  nation  espoused  the  claims  of  its 
citizens  against  a  debtor  nation,  to  resort  to  force 
if  the  claims,  after  the  exhaustion  of  diplomatic 
efforts,  were  disavowed  or  repudiated,  or  even  if 
only  there  was  a  refusal  from  inability  to  pay. 
Bombardments,  seizure  of  revenues  and  occu- 
pation of  territory  had  been  employed  to  com- 
pel payment,' — a  most  harsh  and  severe  method 
of  collection,  which  constantly  imperiled  the 
peace  of  the  world.  It  will  also  be  noted  that  al- 
though this  was  an  American  project,  inspired, 
no  doubt,  by  the  desire  to  protect  the  weaker 
states  of  Central  and  South  America,  there  is  no 
specific  reference  to  them  or  to  any  particular 
country  in  the  convention  as  adopted.  It  can 
equally  avail  for  the  protection  of  every  nation, 
great  or  small,  but  particularly  of  the  smaller 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE  6l 

nations  who  are  more  often  in  the  predicament 
of  inability  to  respond  promptly  to  their  obliga- 
tions to  the  citizens  of  other  nations  for  money 
loaned  or  advanced. 

Here  was  a  case,  and  perhaps  the  first  case  on 
record,  of  a  form  of  compulsory  arbitration, 
agreed  to  by  all  the  nations  of  the  earth  except 
five,  who  abstained  from  voting.  The  five  states 
that  abstained  from  voting  were  Belgium,  Rou- 
mania,  Sweden,  Switzerland  and  Venezuela.60 
Venezuela,  which  had  given  the  world  more 
trouble  in  this  matter  than  all  other  states  com- 
bined, was  willing  to  accept  the  benefit  of  the 
renunciation  of  force  provided  by  the  first  article 
of  the  convention,  but  was  unwilling  to  bind  it- 
self to  arbitrate,  and  as  the  vote  was  taken  upon 
the  whole  article,  it  refused  to  sign  the  conven- 
tion. 

Certainly  this  convention  did  greatly  advance 
the  cause  of  arbitration,  and  actually  committed 
the  Nations  of  the  world  to  resort  to  it  before  at- 
tempting force.  The  question  had  been  a  very 
serious  source  of  controversy  for  many  years. 
Sometimes  nations  had  almost  come  to  blows,  and 
very  bitter  feelings  had  been  excited  by  a  resort 
to  force  by  creditor  nations,  even  in  the  case  of 
inability  to  pay,  and  the  first  creditor  nation  that 


62  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

grabbed  the  customs  or  territory  or  other  resour- 
ces of  a  debtor  nation,  was  deemed  to  have  the 
preference  in  any  solution  or  settlement  that 
might  ensue. 

The  proposition,  it  will  be  observed,  as  adopted, 
has  no  special  or  express  bearing  upon  our  Mon- 
roe Doctrine,  but  it  is  an  approach  to  and  rec- 
ognition by  the  Nations  of  the  law  of  "hands 
off"  as  to  weak  nations  on  the  part  of  strong  ones, 
until  they  have  had  a  chance  for  the  intervention 
of  arbitration.  The  contrary  rule  had  been  the 
most  threatening  form  of  assault  upon  the  Mon- 
roe Doctrine  which  had  theretofore  taken  place. 

The  Monroe  Doctrine  is  our  peculiar,  favored 
doctrine,  that  there  shall  be  no  occupation  of 
American  soil  by  foreign  nations  and  no  attempt 
on  their  part  to  extend  their  system  to  any  por- 
tion of  this  hemisphere.  But  it  has  never  been 
assented  to,  that  I  know  of,  in  a  definite  way, 
as  by  treaty,  by  any  of  the  nations,  great  or 
small.  It  is  treated  with  very  great  politeness, 
and  more  and  more  so  as  we  advance  in  strength, 
and  many  wise  jurists  are  of  the  opinion  that 
its  maintenance  in  the  future,  especially  after 
the  Panama  Canal  shall  have  been  opened,  will 
depend  wholly  upon  the  strength  of  our  arms 
to  maintain  and  enforce  it.  For  one,  I  am  decid- 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE  63 

edly  of  that  opinion,  and  ardent  as  is  my  advo- 
cacy of  peace,  I  believe  that  it  would  be  the 
height  of  folly  for  us  to  expect  to  maintain 
peace  without  the  maintenance  of  an  adequate 
navy,  ready  and  able,  in  any  emergency,  to  resist 
any  attack  upon  our  cherished  national  doctrine. 

President  Roosevelt  very  justly  said  that  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  will  keep  good  as  long  as  we 
are  strong  enough  to  make  it  good,  and  President 
Taft  is  wisely  urging  the  steady  increase  in  the 
number  of  our  battleships,  with  the  necessities  of 
the  immediate  future  in  view.  As  our  power 
grows  and  our  navy  grows,  the  Doctrine  will  be 
treated  with  greater  politeness  and  deference  by 
foreign  nations,  who,  although  they  may  not  for- 
mally agree  to  it,  will  not  disregard  it. 

I  remember  that  even  as  long  ago  as  when 
Lord  Salisbury  was  Prime  Minister  and  Foreign 
Secretary,  he  spoke  of  it  with  the  greatest  re- 
spect, and  the  representatives  of  other  govern- 
ments will  regard  it  in  like  manner  if  only  we  do 
our  duty,  and  manifest  our  power  to  maintain  it. 

It  tends  very  much,  of  course,  to  keep  the 
peace  of  the  world,  that  in  this  proposition  that  I 
have  now  referred  to,  we  have  all  the  nations 
agreeing,  by  treaty,  that  in  the  case  of  contractual 
debts,  claimed  to  be  due  by  one  nation  to  the 


64  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

citizens  of  another,  force  shall  not  be  resorted  to 
until  arbitration  has  been  tried,  and  that  cer- 
tainly was  a  great  step  forward  towards  the 
establishment  of  a  fixed  and  universal  rule  of 
international  law  on  a  most  important  subject, 
and  in  itself  is  an  important  barrier  in  the  de- 
fense of  the  Monroe  Doctrine. 

Our  success  under  this  head  is  mainly — and  I 
might  say  almost  exclusively — due  to  the  earnest- 
ness, tact  and  skill  of  General  Horace  Porter, 
my  fellow-ambassador  and  delegate  at  the  Con- 
ference, to  whom  its  conduct  was  committed  by 
the  Secretary  of  State  with  the  full  concurrence 
of  the  entire  delegation.61  From  the  moment  of 
its  introduction  until  its  final  adoption,  General 
Porter,  by  night  and  by  day,  in  season  and  out 
of  season,  in  public  and  in  private,  devoted  his 
entire  energies  to  carrying  this  important  mea- 
sure. It  was  a  work  of  the  greatest  difficulty  and 
delicacy,  because  it  ran  counter  to  the  settled  con- 
victions and  practices  of  many  of  the  nations,  and 
to  the  general  objections  to  obligatory  arbitra- 
tion in  any  form,  and  also  because  the  friends  of 
the  principle  of  the  measure  were  much  divided 
in  their  views.  To  reconcile  these  differences  re- 
quired all  the  ability  of  a  most  experienced  diplo- 
matist, and  as  every  word  in  the  convention,  as 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE  65 

finally  adopted,  was  subjected  to  close  criticism 
before  the  actual  phraseology  finally  arrived  at 
could  be  adopted,  the  wonder  is  that  he  was  able 
to  succeed  at  all. 

This  is  one  great  and  direct  step  forward, 
which  I  claim  has  resulted  from  the  work  of  the 
Second  Conference,  in  spite  of  all  the  efforts  of 
its  critics  to  belittle  it. 

Another  and  still  more  important  one  was  the 
establishment  of  an  International  Court  of  Ap- 
peal in  Prize  Causes.  This  was  another  great 
measure  which  received  the  assent  of  the  dele- 
gates of  thirty-seven  nations.  Six  nations  ab- 
stained from  voting  and  only  one  nation,  Brazil, 
voted  against  it.  This  assent  was  subject,  of 
course,  to  the  ratification  of  the  nations  they  rep- 
resented.62 This  question  had  been  one  of  long 
standing  dispute  and  controversy.  When  war 
broke  out,  it  had  always  been  the  practice  for 
each  of  the  combatants  to  establish  or  resort  to 
national  prize  courts  of  its  own,  which  neces- 
sarily passed  upon  the  validity  of  every  capture 
made  by  its  forces  and  brought  in  for  adjudica- 
tion. According  to  the  weakness  of  human 
nature,  from  which  even  courts  are  not  exempt, 
it  generally  happened  that  the  validity  of  the 
capture,  being  adjudged  only  by  one  side,  was 


66  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

sustained  by  the  national  court,  and  this  was 
final,  so  far  as  the  law  controlled.  If  the  de- 
cision involved  the  disposition  of  a  vast  amount 
of  property,  or  was  one  which  seemed  to  violate 
the  rules  of  natural  justice  and  equity,  diplomacy 
went  to  work  to  obtain  reparation  for  the  neu- 
tral, whose  property  had  been  thus  summarily  dis- 
posed of.  And  sometimes,  but  only  rarely,  joint 
commissions  appointed  by  the  two  nations  had 
reversed  the  judgment  of  condemnation  by  the 
national  court  of  the  belligerent,  but  the  latter  was 
not  bound  to  join  in  such  a  commission.  The  de- 
sideratum was  to  create  a  tribunal  of  international 
sanction,  which  should,  in  an  independent  spirit, 
unbiased  by  the  national  interests  and  passions  of 
the  contending  parties,  finally  adjudge  the  case  on 
the  general  principles  of  international  law  and  in 
the  light  of  established  rules  of  justice  and  equity. 
This  was  one  of  the  most  interesting  subjects 
brought  before  us,  and  if  our  action  upon  it  shall 
be  ratified  by  the  governments  whose  delegates 
voted  for  it,  which  is  altogether  probable,  the 
result  will  be  that  we  shall  have,  for  the  first 
time  in  history,  an  international  court,  before 
which  the  aggrieved  party  can  bring  its  adversary 
compulsorily  for  the  final  settlement  of  a  certain 
class  of  disputed  questions  between  them.  The 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE  67 

project  was  brought  forward  simultaneously  by 
Germany  and  Great  Britain,  whose  representa- 
tives were  both  very  zealous  for  its  accomplish- 
ment, but  evidently  from  different  motives  and 
from  opposite  points  of  view.  Great  Britain, 
with  her  mighty  navy  riding  on  all  the  oceans, 
upon  the  outbreak  of  a  war,  might  seize  and 
condemn  neutral  property,  and  Germany,  with 
its  much  smaller  navy  at  that  time,  might  find 
itself  in  the  position  of  a  neutral  power  whose 
property  was  seized  by  one  or  the  other  of  the 
contestants. 

We  gave  our  general  assent  to  the  proposition 
at  the  outset,  and  waited  to  hear  what  would 
result  from  the  differences  that  manifestly  existed 
between  the  two  nations  that  had  brought  the 
project  forward.  They  both  agreed  that  there 
ought  to  be  an  appeal  from  the  prize  adjudication 
of  national  courts,  to  an  international  tribunal  of 
final  authority,  which  should  substitute  the  rules 
of  international  law  or  the  general  principles  of 
justice  for  the  selfish  adjudication  of  the  national 
courts,  by  whose  decisions  the  owners  of  neu- 
tral property  had  suffered  much  from  belliger- 
ents engaged  in  hot  and  active  conflict,  in  which 
the  neutral  had  no  interest.  I  think  that  no 
nation  at  one  time  suffered  more  seriously  than 


68  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

we  did  from  this  unhappy  condition  of  the  law 
as  to  neutral  property.  Nobody  can  ever  forget 
the  terrible  depredations  which  were  committed 
upon  neutral  commerce  in  the  early  part  of  the 
last  century,  when  war  existed  between  Great 
Britain  and  France,  and  we  were  the  victims  of 
very  serious  spoliation  by  the  capture,  by  both 
sides,  of  our  innocent  and  unoffending  neutral 
ships  and  cargoes.  Expecting,  as  we  did,  that  the 
United  States,  in  the  future,  as  in  the  past,  in  the 
contests  of  nations,  would  generally  be  neutral, 
we  advocated  the  Court  from  that  point  of  view. 

It  appeared  manifest  from  the  outset  that  there 
were  very  serious  differences  between  the  German 
and  the  English  delegations  in  their  efforts  to 
agree  upon  the  scheme  for  the  establishment  of 
the  Court  which  they  both  desired  in  principle. 
These  differences  reached,  at  one  time,  an  im- 
passe which  threatened  to  defeat  the  measure 
altogether,  as  Sir  Edward  Fry,  the  chief  delegate 
of  Great  Britain,  announced  that  he  could  make 
no  further  argument;  that  argument  on  the  part 
of  Great  Britain  had  done  all  that  it  could,  and 
that  there  were  three  or  four  serious  points  be- 
tween them  unsettled. 

It  was  at  this  point  that  our  delegation  was 
able,  in  the  spirit  of  harmony  and  conciliation,  to 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE  69 

intervene  successfully  and  save  the  measure  from 
final  defeat.63  Great  Britain  insisted  that  the 
court  should  be  a  permanent  one,  while  Germany 
wished  to  have  it  called  into  existence  at  the  out- 
break of  every  war  and  for  the  purposes  of  that 
war  only.  Germany  insisted  that  since  an  appeal 
to  an  international  court  was  the  object  in  view, 
such  an  appeal  should  be  from  the  court  of  first 
instance  in  the  national  tribunals.  England,  prid- 
irfg  herself  so  justly  upon  the  great  record  which 
Lord  Stowell  and  others  of  the  Great  Admiralty 
and  Prize  Judges  of  England  had  made,  and 
which  had  largely  settled  the  law  of  capture  and 
prize,  was  very  desirous  that  it  should  be  from 
the  court  of  last  resort  only.  Again,  one  of  the 
contestants  was  in  favor  of  the  appeal  being  taken 
not  by  the  owner  of  the  captured  property,  but 
by  the  nation  to  whom  such  owner  belonged,  and 
thus  three  serious  points  of  difference  had  arisen 
between  them  which  seemed  for  the  time  being 
incapable  of  solution,  and  there  was  still  another 
which  involved  the  composition  of  the  proposed 
Court.  England,  with  that  natural  instinct  for 
law  that  the  Anglo-Saxon  races  possess,  insisted 
that  the  judges  of  the  international  court  should 
all  be  pure  jurists.  Germany,  on  the  other  hand, 
stoutly  contended  that  the  court,  having  to  do 


70  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

with  purely  naval  matters,  should  be  made  up, 
in  part,  at  any  rate,  of  admirals,  they  believing 
that  on  a  question  of  prizes,  admirals  would  be 
the  wisest  and  the  safest  judges. 

On  the  first  point  of  difference  we  sided  with 
Great  Britain  and  persuaded  Germany  to  yield 
the  matter  and  to  establish  the  court  as  a  perma- 
nent court.  On  the  next  question,  from  which 
national  court  an  appeal  to  the  international  court 
should  be  taken,  we  suggested  that  it  should  Be 
from  the  court  not  of  first  instance,  but  of  second 
instance  in  the  national  tribunals.  This  would 
secure  the  action  of  our  own  Supreme  Court, 
which  we  thought  would  probably  be  satisfactory 
without  an  appeal  from  either  side,  and  would  not 
hazard  the  possibility  of  what  might  prove  to  be 
very  unpopular  in  America,  an  appeal  on  any 
terms  or  conditions  which  could  dispense  with  a 
decision  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States,  and  after  very  close  and  active  discussion, 
our  conciliatory  proposition  was  adopted  by  both 
the  contending  parties. 

Then,  as  to  whether  the  owner  of  the  property 
captured,  or  his  government,  should  have  the 
right  to  appeal,  our  suggestion  was  that  the  ap- 
peal should  be  taken  by  the  owner  of  the  property 
under  general  regulations  established  by  his  gov- 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE  71 

ernment,  and  that  middle  course  was  adopted  by 
the  contestants. 

Finally,  as  to  the  composition  of  the  Court,  our 
prejudices,  our  judgment,  our  instructions,  were 
all  in  favor  of  the  British  view,  that  any  court 
which  should  be  created  should  be  a  real  court, 
composed  of  jurists  learned  in  the  law,  and  at  the 
same  time  we  recognized  the  German  prejudice 
in  favor  of  admirals  experienced  in  naval  warfare 
as  an  element  of  great  utility  in  the  composition 
of  the  court.  We  therefore  proposed  that  al- 
though admirals  should  not  be  made  judges,  al- 
though the  judges  should  always  be  lawyers 
trained  and  educated  in  the  principles  of  law  and 
equity,  nevertheless,  somewhat  after  the  fashion 
of  the  English  Court  of  Admiralty,  which  brings 
in  the  Trinity  Masters  for  advice,  no  case  should 
be  decided  without  a  naval  representative  of  each 
of  the  contending  parties  being  present  to  advise 
the  court,  and  although  they  should  occupy  seats 
a  little  lower  than  the  justices,  no  cases  should  be 
decided  until  the  naval  representatives  had  been 
fully  heard  and  their  views  completely  understood 
and  considered.  On  our  insistence,  the  German 
representatives  accepted  this  view,  and  Germany, 
Great  Britain,  the  United  States  and  France 
agreed  jointly  to  be  sponsors  for  the  measure,  and 


72  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

in  this  form  it  was  adopted  by  the  Conference  and 
sent  to  the  Nations  for  ratification.64 

It  was  well  understood  that  eight  great  Nations 
were  more  interested  in  questions  of  war  and 
prize  than  the  other  nations,  and  as  there  were 
forty-four  Nations  in  all,  and  it  was  not  possible 
for  each  to  have  a  judge  all  the  time,  the  matter 
was  adjusted  by  creating  a  court  of  fifteen  mem- 
bers, of  whom  nine  should  be  a  quorum;  the 
eight  Nations  which  were  more  interested  in 
questions  of  war  and  prize  than  the  others  were 
each  to  have  one  judge  all  the  time ;  and  forming 
the  court  for  a  series  of  twelve  years,  each  of 
the  other  Nations,  according  to  the  interest  that 
it  would  probably  have  in  the  business  of  the 
court,  its  population,  its  wealth,  its  activity,  its 
commerce,  was  to  have  a  judge  appointed  by 
itself,  but  serving  only  for  a  graded  number  of 
years,  from  eleven  years  down  to  one  year,  as  in 
the  case  of  Panama. 

And  that  I  consider  to  be  another  accomplished 
fact,  another  great  step  forward  towards  the 
creation  of  a  real  international  law  binding  upon 
all  Nations,  and  to  the  practical  advancement  of 
international  peace. 

As  was  to  be  expected,  a  question  arose  with 
our  own  government  as  to  the  expediency,  if  not 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE  73 

as  to  the  constitutionality,  of  allowing  an  appeal 
to  any  foreign  or  international  tribunal  from  any 
decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States.  This  question  Mr.  Knox  has  very  wisely 
met  and  adjusted  by  ratifying,  with  the  reserva- 
tion that  the  action  of  the  International  Prize 
Court,  instead  of  taking  the  form  of  a  direct  ap- 
peal from  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States,  should  be  limited  to  the  determination  of 
a  claim  for  damages  for  the  owner  of  the  injured 
property  against  the  United  States  or  the  captor.65 
Other  nations  have  also  made  reservations,  Eng- 
land, for  instance,  withholding  her  approval  until 
the  international  maritime  law  which  the  court 
would  administer  should  be  settled  by  a  confer- 
ence of  the  maritime  nations  which  she  called  in 
London,  and  which  did  establish  definite  rules  of 
law.  The  rules  are  still  a  subject  of  contention 
between  the  two  Houses  of  Parliament,  the  bill 
approving  the  declaration  of  London  having  been 
thrown  out  by  the  House  of  Lords,  with  the  as- 
surance that  it  is  to  be  again  introduced  in  the 
Commons  during  the  present  session  of  Parlia- 
ment.66 While  the  subject  of  ratification  of  this 
very  important  convention  is  still  pending,  I  think 
there  is  no  doubt  that  the  court  will  be  established 
at  no  distant  day,  and  will  stand  as  a  monument 


74  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

of  the  advancing  progress  of  civilization  and  the 
cause  of  peace. 

But  the  success  of  conferences  is  to  be  weighed 
and  measured,  not  simply  by  their  direct  action, 
which  commands  the  approval  of  all  the  Nations, 
but  also,  and  perhaps  even  more,  by  the  progress 
they  make  in  questions  still  left  undecided  and 
subject  to  further  action  by  diplomacy  or  by 
future  conference.  And  here  we  claim  for  the 
Second  Conference  great  distinction,  and  for  the 
work  of  our  delegation  under  the  instructions  of 
Secretary  Root,  a  very  leading  part  in  the  ad- 
vocacy of  all  the  most  constructive  and  pro- 
gressive measures  that  were  brought  forward 
for  consideration.  We  could  not,  of  course,  as 
in  the  Parliament  or  Congress,  carry  questions 
by  force  of  the  majority.  That  wouild  soon 
put  an  end  to  all  conferences,  which  meet,  as 
Franklin  said  in  the  Federal  Convention  when 
they  began  their  discussions,  "to  confer  and  not  to 
contend." 

And  so  I  wish  to  speak  briefly  of  three  or  four 
other  matters  that  were  proposed  and  were  not 
adopted  by  the  Conference,  but  in  which  great 
progress  was  made. 

We  went  instructed  by  our  Government  to 
maintain,  to  the  best  of  our  ability,  our  old  claim 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE  75 

for  the  immunity  of  private  property  at  sea,  that 
is,  of  private  and  unoffending  property,  not 
contraband,  even  in  enemies'  ships  at  sea  in  time 
of  war.  Franklin  had  endeavored  to  have  this 
asserted  as  a  substantial  clause  in  the  treaty  of 
peace  between  us  and  Great  Britain  in  1783,  plac- 
ing private  property  at  sea  in  the  same  position 
of  immunity  as  private  property  on  the  land ; 
that  except  in  cases  of  contraband,  it  should  not 
be  liable  to  capture,  which  was  a  very  impor- 
tant move  in  the  direction  of  saving  inoffensive 
and  unoffending  commerce  from  spoliation  and 
destruction  in  case  of  war,  and  very  much  for  the 
benefit  of  the  world  at  large,  to  make  commerce 
free  always  from  interruption  by  war  any  fur- 
ther than  was  absolutely  necessary. 

Time  and  again  our  government  had  pressed  it 
during  the  intervening  hundred  years  between 
Franklin's  death  and  the  meeting  of  the  Confer- 
ence. They  had  proposed  it  at  the  First  Confer- 
ence, from  which  it  was  absolutely  excluded, 
although  Dr.  White  succeeded  in  putting  on  file  a 
very  powerful  memorial  in  support  of  it,  and 
made  a  most  effective  address  in  its  behalf.67  The 
First  Conference  would  not  listen  to  it;  they  said 
it  was  not  within  the  programme,  but  recom- 
mended the  careful  study  of  it  for  consideration 


76  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

of  the  next  Conference,  where  it  properly  came 
up.  We  had  it  inserted,  by  Franklin  himself, 
in  the  treaty  of  1785  with  Prussia,  and  once  we 
had  it  in  a  treaty  with  Italy,  and  several  times 
other  nations,  imitating  that  example,  when  war 
broke  out  between  them,  agreed,  at  the  outbreak, 
that  there  should  be  such  immunity,  but  no  sub- 
stantial progress  had  been  made  in  the  way  of  its 
recognition  as  an  international  doctrine  when  our 
Conference  met. 

Of  course,  most  of  the  great  nations  opposed  it. 
Germany  was  the  only  one  of  the  great  fighting 
nations  that  voted  affirmatively  with  us,  but  it 
was  very  respectfully  considered  and  fully  dis- 
cussed, and  after  several  weeks,  in  which  it  came 
up  from  time  to  time,  almost  two-thirds  of  the 
nations  voting,  that  is,  by  a  vote  of  twenty-one  to 
eleven,  recorded  their  votes  in  favor  of  the  estab- 
lishment of  such  immunity.68  It  was  not  found 
possible,  however,  in  the  face  of  great  commercial 
nations  that  opposed  it,  and  which  were  likely  at 
any  time  to  be  engaged  in  war,  to  press  it  further. 
Our  orders  were  not  to  press  anything  to  the 
point  of  irritation,  but  if  we  found  it  impossible 
to  carry  a  matter  through  at  this  Conference, 
to  carry  it  as  far  as  we  could  and  then  drop  it, 
leaving  it  for  further  consideration,  in  the  hope 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE  77 

that  by  and  by,  with  the  growing  sense  of  inter- 
national justice,  it  would  be  accepted  by  the 
nations.69 

So  there  it  stands  for  these  twenty-one  Na- 
tions who  supported  us  to  enter  into  such  an 
agreement  among  themselves,  or  in  case  of  war 
breaking  out  between  any  of  them,  to  make  a 
special  agreement  for  the  immunity,  or  for  action 
by  the  next  Conference  to  be  held  in  1915. 

So  there  again,  very  positive  progress  was 
made.  We  stand  no  longer  where  we  did  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Conference,  nobody  assenting 
to  it  but  ourselves,  but  twenty  other  nations  of 
greater  or  less  importance  pledged  to  the  propo- 
sition which  would  make  so  strongly  for  peace 
and  for  the  limitation  of  armaments. 

We  labored  also  very  earnestly  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  general  court  of  arbitration,  of  a 
permanent  court,  meeting  regularly  and  not  to  be 
called  together  for  each  specific  case,  as  was  pro- 
vided by  the  First  Conference,  which  had  merely 
established,  under  the  name  of  a  Permanent 
Court,  a  list  of  jurors  or  judges  who  might  be 
selected  by  any  nations  that  should  choose  so 
to  do. 

This  was  a  question  that  interested  all  the 
nations  alike,  and  a  general  agreement  was 


78  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

reached  first,  that  there  ought  to  be  such  a  court, 
and  whereas,  in  the  First  Conference  the  idea 
that  there  could  be  such  a  court  was  abandoned  as 
impracticable,  and  no  action  was  taken  beyond 
what  I  have  already,  in  my  former  lecture,  de- 
scribed, the  Second  Conference  voted  that  such  a 
court  of  arbitration  ought  to  be  established,  and 
we  framed  by  general  consent  a  scheme  for  the 
functions,  the  organization  and  the  procedure  of 
the  court,  to  which  substantially  all  agreed. 

The  failure  came  when  the  subject  of  the 
method  of  appointing  or  creating  judges  of  the 
court  was  reached.  Almost  all  the  larger  nations 
considered  that  what  had  been  agreed  to  in  this 
respect,  in  the  creation  of  the  prize  court,  ought  to 
be  adopted,  and  that  there  should  be  a  similar  dis- 
tribution of  judges,  according  to  the  interest  and 
business  that  the  several  nations  would  probably 
bring  to  the  court.  Well,  there  we  hit  upon  an 
obstacle  which  there  was  no  overcoming.  We  were 
forty-four  nations  assembled.  Central  and  South 
America  constituted  twenty-one  nations  of  all 
that  took  part  in  the  Second  Conference,  and  they 
claimed  and  asserted  that  sovereignty  was  sover- 
eignty, and  that  all  nations  are  absolutely  equal, 
and  although  they  had  assented  unanimously,  with 
the  exception  of  Brazil,  to  the  formation  of  the 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE 


79 


international  court  of  appeal  in  prize,  on  the  terms 
I  have  mentioned,  they  took  a  stand  on  this  subject 
and  insisted  that  there  should  be  nothing  short  of 
absolute  equality  in  the  appointment  of  judges. 

As  there  could  not  be  a  court  of  forty-four 
judges,  and  as  Russia  and  Germany,  Great  Britain 
and  France  and  the  United  States  could  not  agree 
that  every  nation  was  as  big  as  every  other,  as 
was  claimed  by  some  of  these  small  nations, — 
that  Panama  was  in  all  respects  the  equal  of 
Great  Britain,  and  Luxemburg  the  equal  of  Ger- 
many,— no  agreement  could  be  reached.  We 
proposed  various  schemes,  being  very  earnest,  in 
the  hope  of  establishing  this  court. 

We  even  declared  our  willingness  to  have  an 
election  of  judges  by  all  the  nations,  each  voting 
for  a  limited  number.  We  thought  we  could  take 
our  chances  of  being  represented  in  that  court, 
and  were  willing  to  consent  to  an  election,  even 
though  we  should  be  left  out,  because  the  whole 
scheme  proceeded  upon  the  idea  that  nobody  was 
compelled  to  come  before  the  proposed  court. 
Any  nations  preferring  it  could  resort  to  other 
means  of  settling  their  international  differences, 
and  especially  to  the  tribunal  which  is  now  in 
existence  at  The  Hague,  consisting  of  a  list  of 
referees  from  among  whom  the  parties  may  select 


8o  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

judges,  two  or  three  or  five  as  they  may  agree, 
but  not  in  reality  a  permanent  court  at  all.  This 
new  tribunal,  if  created,  was  to  continue  to  exist 
by  the  side  of  the  existing  Permanent  Court.70 

This  difference  as  to  the  mode  of  selecting 
judges  could  not  be  settled  by  the  Conference. 
It  was  therefore  voted  that  there  ought  to  be 
such  a  court;  that  the  scheme  that  we  had  estab- 
lished for  its  powers,  procedure  and  organization, 
its  sessions  and  the  general  theory  of  law  that 
should  be  applied  to  it,  was  accepted;  and  it  was 
referred  to  the  nations  to  agree,  in  the  best  man- 
ner they  could,  upon  the  number  of  judges,  and 
the  mode  of  their  selection,  and  that  as  soon  as 
that  was  done,  the  court  should  be  established 
with  the  constitution  that  we  had  framed  for  it. 
And  this  also  is  a  proposition  which,  having  ad- 
vanced so  far,  is  likely  to  be  favorably  settled 
by  diplomatic  intercourse,  or  not  later  than  the 
meeting  of  the  next  Conference.71 

Our  instructions  had  also  been  to  press  for  a 
general  arbitration  agreement  substantially  in  the 
form  of  those  arbitration  agreements  which  we 
made  with  eleven  nations  in  1904,  but  which  came 
to  an  unhappy  end  by  a  difference  between  the 
President  and  Congress  in  respect  of  one  of  the 
terms  of  the  treaty.72  Intense  interest  was  taken 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE  gl 

in  our  proposition  for  such  an  agreement  by  all 
the  nations,  and  it  was  the  one  question  which  be- 
came critical,  if  you  believe  that  any  question 
could  be  said  to  be  critical,  but  in  respect  to  which, 
at  any  rate,  there  were  violent  differences  of 
opinion.  It  was  hotly  debated  from  the  time  of 
its  introduction  until  a  few  days  before  the  Con- 
ference came  to  an  end,  and  finally,  by  vote  of 
some  thirty-two  nations  to  nine,  it  was  adopted  in 
committee.73  We  thought  that  this  gave  us  a 
right  to  carry  it  before  the  Conference  in  plenary 
session  for  final  decision,  but  it  was  intimated 
that  one  great  nation,  if  this  were  done,  would 
break  up  the  Conference  by  its  withdrawal. 

We  thought  that  it  ought  to  be  presented  to 
the  world  in  the  Final  Act  as  a  doctrine  favored 
by  the  votes  of  four  nations  to  one,  carried  to  an 
advanced  position  which  had  never  been  dreamed 
of.  But,  on  the  whole,  it  was  deemed  wiser  that 
a  somewhat  colorless  resolution  should  be 
adopted,  to  the  effect  that  the  Conference  ap- 
proved of  the  general  principal  of  arbitration, 
and  that  there  were  subjects  that  ought  always  to 
be  referred  to  arbitration,  and  leaving  it  so  to 
the  future  consideration  of  the  nations.  We 
declined  to  agree  to  this  and  abstained  from  vot- 
ing, because  we  considered  it  too  much  of  a 


82  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

retreat  from  the  advanced  position  which  we  had 
already  secured  for  it  in  Committee.  We  claimed 
that  the  thirty-two  nations  who  had  favored  it 
should  be  permitted  to  enter  into  such  an  agree- 
ment between  themselves  under  the  aegis  of  the 
Conference  leaving  it  for  the  others  to  stay  out 
or  come  in  afterwards,  as  they  pleased,  for,  from 
the  beginning,  it  was  premised  that  no  one  should 
be  compelled  to  come  into  it,  but  each  should 
stay  out  as  long  as  it  pleased.74 

Now,  if  the  doctrine  of  arbitration  as  a  sub- 
stitute for  war  is  regarded  as  of  value,  have  we 
not  here  made  another  very  great  advance  by  the 
work  of  this  Conference?  At  least,  I  conclude 
so  from  the  rapid  and  frequent  resort  to  arbitra- 
tion by  all  of  the  nations  since  that  day.  Even 
the  failure  of  President  Taft  to  carry  through, 
unamended,  his  favorite  treaties  of  arbitration 
with  Great  Britain  and  France,  has  not  discour- 
aged me  at  all. 

There  is  no  question  under  the  Constitution 
as  to  the  equal  voice  of  the  Senate  as  a  part  of 
the  treaty-making  power.  The  Senate  can  never 
be  expected,  and  has  no  right,  to  abandon  its 
position  that  it  cannot  abdicate  its  constitutional 
authority,  to  give  or  withhold  its  approval  and 
consent  from  the  actual  and  final  agreement 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE  83 

which  submits  to  arbitration  a  difference  with 
another  nation. 

It  seemed  to  me  that  the  Executive  made  a 
great  mistake  in  1904,  when  the  Senate  insisted 
upon  this  power,  in  withholding  the  eleven  treat- 
ies as  amended  by  the  Senate  from  further  sub- 
mission to  the  other  contracting  Powers,  and  I 
hope  that  that  mistake  will  not  be  repeated  in  this 
instance.  Any  step  forward,  however  slight  the 
gain  may  be,  is  not  to  be  lost  or  thrown  away, 
for  each  step  leads  always  to  another  and  further 
advance.  And  certain  it  is  that  President  Taft, 
in  this  instance,  took  a  step  far  in  advance  of 
any  that  had  been  taken  by  the  head  of  any  state 
in  the  world's  history,  in  proposing  that  all  ques- 
tions without  reservation  should  be  settled  by  ar- 
bitration, rather  than  by  a  resort  to  war.  And 
that  is  the  ultimate  goal  which  we  hope,  at  some 
distant  day,  to  reach,  when  his  name  will  be  for- 
ever remembered  as  its  author. 

Another  important  measure  that  we  were  in- 
structed to  press  and  did  press,  with  all  our 
might,  was  in  respect  to  future  conferences.  We 
had  hoped  to  see  established  some  machinery  by 
which  automatic  action  should  take  place,  and  the 
conference  be  called  without  waiting  for  the 
action  of  any  particular  nation.  We  claimed  that 


84  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

its  organization  and  procedure  should  be  in  its 
own  hands  by  means  of  an  international  executive 
committee,  which  should  gather  the  views  of  the 
nations  some  two  or  three  years  beforehand,  and 
form  a  tentative  programme  for  submission  to  the 
Conference,  and  that  thus  the  predominance  and 
control  of  any  particular  nation  should  be 
avoided.  That,  in  a  modified  form,  was  finally 
passed,  but  with  great  difficulty  and  after  infinite 
and  detailed  discussion,  which  involved  almost 
every  word  of  the  resolution. 

It  is  very  difficult  to  get  the  representatives  of 
forty-four  nations  to  agree  upon  phraseology,  as 
I  might  illustrate  in  respect  to  two  single  words 
in  this  last  proposition.  We  proposed  at  first  that 
there  should  be  another  Conference  held  on  the 
1 5th  day  of  June,  1914,  seven  years  from  the 
time  we  came  together,  and  we  advocated  it 
strongly  upon  the  doctrine  that  seven  years  is  a 
magical  number,  being  a  period  during  which 
each  man  absolutely  changes  his  structure,  and 
that  the  men  who  would  come  to  it  then,  even 
if  they  were  the  same,  would  be  absolutely  new 
men.  This  amused  the  Conference,  but  did  not 
convince  them.  It  was  objected  that  it  was  too 
definite  to  say  the  I5th  day  of  June,  1914.  Ger- 
many said  it  did  not  want  it  and  would  not  have 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE  85 

it  before  1914,  and  so  its  representative  proposed 
that  it  should  be  not  earlier  than  1914.  Great 
Britain,  anxious  for  such  a  meeting,  made  the 
counter  proposition  that  it  should  be  not  later 
than  1914,  and  finally  we  proposed  to  settle  the 
difference  between  them  and  make  it  about  1914. 
But  when  it  was  brought  to  the  final  test  of  the 
unanimous  approval  of  all  the  forty-four  First 
Delegates,  even  "about"  was  considered  too  defi- 
nite, and  so  the  recommendation  was  put  and  car- 
ried unanimously,  as  it  stands,  that  another  con- 
ference should  be  held  at  a  period  analogous  to 
that  which  had  elapsed  since  the  last  Conference. 

This  gives  a  little  idea  of  the  difficulties  with 
which  we  had  to  contend  in  settling  the  phrase- 
ology of  that  as  of  every  other  important  reso- 
lution. The  result  was  that  it  stands  resolved 
that  two  years  before  the  date,  or  the  probable 
date,  of  the  meeting  of  the  next  conference,  a 
preparatory  committee — they  would  not  agree 
to  the  word  executive  committee — but  a  prepara- 
tory committee,  should  be  appointed  by  inter- 
national action,  which  would  gather  the  views  of 
the  nations,  prepare  a  tentative  programme,  and 
recommend  a  scheme  for  the  organization  and 
procedure  of  the  conference.75 

But  even  thus  mutilated,  I  think  the  adoption  of 


86  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

the  measure  which  necessitates  the  calling  of  a 
third  conference  is  a  very  great  advance.  Friends 
of  peace,  friends  of  arbitration  may  now  depend 
upon  it  that  every  seven  or  eight  years,  there  will 
be  a  similar  conference,  and  that  where  the  last 
conference  left  the  work  unfinished,  the  new  con- 
ference will  take  it  up.  Thus  progress  from  time 
to  time  will  be  steadily  made  and  the  great  effort 
of  the  nations  to  avoid  war  by  the  establishment 
of  arbitration  and  other  peaceful  methods  will,  in 
the  end,  be  successful. 

We  cannot  expect  to  succeed  all  at  once,  or  to 
avoid  war  altogether,  but  great  progress  is  being 
made,  and  if  I  have  made  a  fair  statement  of  the 
action  of  the  Second  Conference  upon  the  princi- 
pal questions  which  were  brought  before  it,  real 
advances  were  made  towards  the  desired  end,  the 
London  Times  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding. 

Man  is  a  fighting  animal.  He  has  fought  his 
way  to  his  present  advanced  position,  which  is  the 
result  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest,  but  I  am  one 
of  those  who  believe  that  by  and  by,  by  the  gen- 
eral consensus  of  the  public  opinion  of  the  world, 
he  will  be  generally  satisfied  that  fighting  does 
not  pay ;  that  wars  and  the  necessary  preparation 
for  war  are,  as  the  Emperor  of  Russia  said  in 
his  first  summons,  a  terrible  burden,  fatal  to  the 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE  g/ 

prosperity  of  nations  who  indulge  in  them,  and 
that  wars  will  become  less  and  less  frequent  as 
time  goes  on. 

The  deliberate  judgment  of  Secretary  Root 
upon  the  work  of  the  Conference,  I  am  happy  to 
believe,  expresses  the  general  opinion  of  all  who 
are  qualified  to  judge  of  it.  He  says : 

"The  work  of  the  Second  Hague  Conference 
presents  the  greatest  advance  ever  made  at  any 
single  time  toward  the  reasonable  and  peaceful 
regulation  of  international  conduct,  unless  it  be 
the  advance  made  at  the  Hague  Conference  of 

1899-" 

"The  most  valuable  result  of  the  Conference  of 
1899  was  that  it  made  the  work  of  the  Conference 
of  1907  possible.  The  achievements  of  the  Con- 
ferences justify  the  belief  that  the  world  has 
entered  upon  an  orderly  process,  through  which, 
step  by  step,  in  successive  conferences,  each  tak- 
ing the  work  of  its  predecessor  as  its  point  of 
departure,  there  may  be  continual  progress  to- 
ward making  the  practice  of  civilized  nations  con- 
form to  their  peaceful  professions."76 

I  ought  not  to  conclude  these  lectures  without 
a  word  of  appreciation  of  the  happy  choice  made 
by  the  Nations,  of  the  place  for  holding  the  Con- 
ferences, and  of  the  more  than  cordial  welcome 


88  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

and  lavish  hospitality  with  which  the  Delegates 
were  received  by  the  government  and  people  of 
Holland. 

The  Hague  had  long  been  known  as  the  place 
where  contending  nations  could  peacefully  settle 
their  differences,  and  many  treaties  had  been 
negotiated  in  Holland.  The  peaceful  atmosphere 
of  the  ancient  city  and  of  the  country  of  which  it 
is  the  ornament,  was  most  favorable  to  the  work 
which  we  had  in  hand. 

The  Dutch  are  a  peculiar  and  most  interesting 
people.  Since  the  expulsion  of  their  Spanish 
tyrants  in  the  sixteenth  century,  they  have  been 
for  the  most  part  quietly  devoted  to  the  arts  of 
peace  and  to  the  cultivation  of  a  prosperous  com- 
merce, from  which,  in  the  larger  cities,  many  have 
realized  liberal  fortunes,  which  they  peacefully 
enjoy,  and  which  enable  them  to  exercise  a  gen- 
erous hospitality.  They  seem  to  be  one  of  the 
most  frugal  and  thrifty  peoples  on  the  face  of 
the  earth,  and  honesty  is  the  prevailing  trait.  I 
often  heard  it  said  there  that  every  man  is  bound 
not  only  to  live  within  his  income,  but  to  save 
half  of  it.  So  habituated  however  are  its  leading 
citizens  to  a  generous  and  royal  exercise  of  hos- 
pitality, that  they  lost  no  occasion  to  entertain 
the  Delegates  in  most  delightful  ways,  sparing  no 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE  89 

expense  to  make  them  feel  at  home  in  their  pro- 
tracted and  laborious  residence  there. 

Her  Majesty,  the  youthful  Queen,  received  the 
entire  body  of  delegates  at  the  royal  palace  at 
The  Hague  on  two  occasions,  and  again  she  en- 
tertained at  dinner  the  First  Delegates  of  all  the 
Nations  at  the  royal  palace  at  Amsterdam,  and 
there  most  graciously  distributed  to  them  beauti- 
fully engraved  silver  medals  struck  in  honor  of 
the  Conference,  and  she  subsequently  presented 
similar  medals  to  all  the  other  Delegates. 

The  Dutch  Government  entertained  the  whole 
body  of  Delegates  by  an  excursion  to  Rotter- 
dam, where  we,  for  the  first  time,  got  an  idea  of 
the  maritime  and  commercial  possibilities  of  Hol- 
land. The  Burgomaster  and  Council  of  The 
Hague  gave  a  most  interesting  ball  at  Scheven- 
ingen,  at  which  the  ancient  customs  and  country 
dances  of  Holland  were  exquisitely  performed, 
carrying  the  spectators  back  to  an  insight  of  life 
at  The  Hague  two  hundred  years  before.  And 
the  public  officials  and  leading  citizens  vied  with 
each  other  in  entertaining  us  to  the  full  extent  of 
our  capacity. 

Belgium,  on  a  delightful  summer  day,  extended 
an  invitation  to  us  all,  with  our  wives  and  fami- 
lies, to  visit  the  ancient  city  of  Bruges,  where,  in 


90 

sight  of  the  beautiful  Belfry  celebrated  by  Long- 
fellow, and  in  its  quaint  old  medieval  hall  of 
state,  we  were  entertained  at  luncheon,  and  after- 
wards witnessed  a  most  artistic  and  beautiful  pro- 
duction of  the  toison  d'or,  which,  again,  carried 
us  back  to  a  realization  of  the  ancient  sports  of 
that  nation. 

The  delegates,  among  themselves,  exchanged 
civilities  not  always  according  to  their  wealth 
and  ability,  but  ever  in  the  same  cordial  and 
fraternal  spirit,  and  it  will  not  surprise  you  to 
hear  that  our  delegation,  although  making  the 
utmost  of  the  modest  allowance  made  to  it  by  the 
State  Department  for  that  purpose,  was  left  far 
in  the  rear  by  some  of  the  younger  South  Ameri- 
can nations,  who  seemed  to  place  in  the  hands  of 
their  delegates  the  means  of  most  rich  and  bril- 
liant entertainments. 

The  moment  of  our  assembling  was  most  pro- 
pitious for  our  work,  for,  at  that  time,  as  hardly 
ever,   for  centuries  before,   absolute  peace  pre- 
vailed among  all  the  nations  of  the  earth. 
"No  war  or  battle  sound 
Was  heard  the  world  around." 

It  was  a  thrilling  moment  when,  as  the  repre- 
sentatives of  all  the  organized  and  civilized  coun- 
tries of  the  world,  for  the  first  time  in  human 


THE  SECOND  CONFERENCE  91 

history,  we  assembled  from  all  quarters  of  the 
globe,  speaking  all  the  languages,  personating  all 
the  races,  religions,  creeds  and  customs,  to  work 
together  for  the  cause  of  Peace,  and  however  the 
results  of  our  labors  may  come  to  be  valued  by 
posterity,  they  were  honestly,  earnestly  and  con- 
scientiously performed,  with  the  resolute  purpose 
on  all  hands  to  advance  the  cause  of  civilization 
and  of  peace. 

During  the  four  months  that  we  were  together, 
the  universal  harmony  that  prevailed  at  the  outset 
was  never  disturbed,  however  much  our  opinions 
and  arguments  conflicted. 

It  was  toward  the  close  of  our  deliberations 
that  a  single  event  occurred,  made  possible  by 
the  unstinted  generosity  of  an  American  citizen 
whose  name  is  indelibly  associated  with  the  cause 
for  which  we  stood.  I  mean  the  laying  of  the 
corner-stone  at  The  Hague  of  the  International 
Palace  of  Peace,  which  by  this  time  is  almost 
completed,  as  a  home  for  the  international  courts 
and  a  shelter  for  all  future  conferences,  where, 
hereafter,  it  is  hoped  that  the  friends  of  peace 
may  gather  at  stated  intervals,  from  time  to  time, 
from  all  nations,  tongues  and  climes,  to  aid  in 
its  promotion. 

And  so,  at  last,  after  the  lapse  of  three  cen- 


92  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

turies,  will  be  realized  the  dream  of  Grotius,  the 
founder  of  international  law,  that  all  the  civilized 
nations  of  the  earth  will  submit  to  its  dictates, 
whether  in  war  or  in  peace. 

And  now  that  we  are  about  to  celebrate  the 
completion  of  a  century  of  unbroken  peace  be- 
tween ourselves  and  all  the  other  great  nations 
of  the  earth,  and  are  also  on  the  eve  of  preparing 
for  a  Third  Conference  at  The  Hague,  we  may 
join  with  them  in  wishing  a  hearty  Godspeed  to 
that  Conference  and  to  all  its  successors  forever.77 


NOTES 


NOTES 

1  See   Encyclopedia   Britannica,    nth   ed.,  vol.   I,   p.   557 
(article  "Alexander  I").     The  authority  upon  which  the 
statement  in  the  article  is  based  is  Tatistcheff's  "Alexandre 
I  et  Napoleon,  1801-1812"  (1891),  pp.  84-85.     For  full  de- 
tails of  the  negotiations  see  Martens'  "Recueil  des  Traites 
et  Conventions  conclus  par  la  Russie  avec  les  Puissances 
fitrangeres",  vol.  XI,  pp.  84-88.     For  the  treaty  resulting 
from  the  negotiations  see  vol.  II  of  the  same  work,  pp. 
433-448,  especially  "Separate  Article  VI",  pp.  442-443. 

2  See    Rolls'    "The    Peace    Conference    at    The    Hague" 
(1900),  pp.  8-9. 

3  See  ibid.,  pp.  9-10. 

4  See  ibid.,  p.  24. 

5  See  ibid.,  p.  25. 

8  For    Lord    Salisbury's    notes,    see    Rolls'    "The    Peace 
Conference  at  The  Hague",  pp.  15,  28  and  30. 

7  See  ibid.,   72-73.     For   Col.    Gilinsky's    speech    see   pp. 

73-75- 

8  For  General   (then  Colonel)    Gross  von  Schwarzhoff's 
address  see  ibid.,  pp.  76-80. 

9  See  ibid.,  p.  83. 

10  For  M.  Bourgeois'  appeal  and  his  proposed  resolution 
see  ibid.,  pp.  87-90. 

11  See  ibid.,  pp.  91-92. 

12  For  the  discussion  of  this  important  subject  see  ibid., 
pp.   134-161,  and   for  the  text  of  this   convention   see  pp. 
417-455. 


96  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

13  For  the  project  of  the  Brussels  Conference  see  Scott's 
"Texts  of  the  Peace  Conferences  at  The  Hague,  1899  and 
I9°7"»  PP-  382-389;  for  Dr.  Lieber's  draft  instructions  see 
ibid.,  pp.  350-376;  and  for  an  appreciation  of  Dr.  Lieber's 
services  and  the  relation  of  his  instructions  both  to  the 
Brussels  project  and  the  convention  of  the  First  Hague 
Conference,  see  two  articles  by  Prof.  Nys,  entitled  "Fran- 
cis Lieber ;  his  Life  and  Work",  in  the  "American  Journal 
of  International  Law"   (1911),  vol.  V.,  pp.  84-117  and  pp. 
355-393— especially  pp.  391-393- 

14  It   was   first   proposed   to   make  the  prohibition   per- 
petual, but  upon  motion  of   Capt.  Crozier  the  prohibition 
was   limited  to  cover   a   period   of   five  years   only.     See 
Holls'  "The  Peace  Conference  at  The  Hague",  p.  95.    For 
the  declaration  see  ibid.,  pp.  454-457. 

15  For  the  text  of  this  declaration  see  Scott's  "Texts  of 
the  Peace  Conferences  at  The  Hague,  1899  and  1907",  pp. 
332-334- 

16  Quoted  from  Hull's  "The  Two  Hague  Conferences" 
(1908),  p.  80.     For  the  text  of  Lord  Reay's  remarkable 
address  see  the  official  report  of  the  Conference,  entitled, 
"Deuxieme   Conference   Internationale   de  la   Paix ;   Actes 
et  Documents",  vol.  Ill,  p.   153. 

17  See  Hull's  "The  Two  Hague  Conferences",  p.  82. 

18  For   the   reasons   which    made   this   convention    unac- 
ceptable to  the  American  delegation,  see  HolPs  "The  Peace 
Conference  at  The  Hague",  pp.  118-120.     For  the  conven- 
tion see  ibid.,  pp.  460-463. 

19  For  the  prolonged  discussion  of  the  question  of  ex- 
panding bullets  and  the  opposition  of  Great   Britain   and 
the  United   States   to  the   convention   on  the  subject,   see 
Holls'  "The  Peace  Conference  at  The  Hague",  pp.  98-117. 
For  the  declaration  as  voted  by  the  Conference,  notwith- 
standing  the   opposition    of    Great   Britain,    Portugal    and 
the  United  States,  see  ibid.,  pp.  456-461.    During  the  course 


NOTES  97 

of  the  Second  Hague  Conference,  Great  Britain  and  Portu- 
gal, however,  adhered  to  the  declaration.  See  Deuxieme 
Conference  Internationale  de  la  Paix ;  Actes  et  Docu- 
ments", vol.  Ill,  p.  159. 

20  For  the  discussion  of  this  convention  see  Holls'  "The 
Peace  Conference  at  The  Hague",  pp.  121-134;  and  for  the 
text  as  adopted,  see  ibid.,  pp.  462-473. 

21  See  ibid.,  134. 

22  Quoted  from  an  article  by  Prof,  de  Martens  in  the 
"North  American  Review"  for  November,  1899,  as  quoted 
in  Holls'  "The  Peace  Conference  at  The  Hague",  p.  162. 

23  In  the  first  article  of  the  convention  for  the  peaceful 
adjustment    of    international    differences,    "the    Signatory 
Powers  agree  to  use  their  best  efforts  to  insure  the  peace- 
able adjustment  of  international  differences",  in  order  "to 
obviate,  as  far  as  possible,  recourse  to  force  in  the  rela- 
tions  between    States."     To  give    effect   to   this    declared 
policy,  the  Conference  was  able  to  negotiate  the  convention 
for  the   peaceful   adjustment   of   international   differences, 
which   deals   specifically  with  good  offices  and  mediation, 
Articles  II  to  VIII ;  international  commissions  of  inquiry, 
Article  IX  to  XIV;  arbitral  justice,  Articles  XV  to  XIX; 
a  permanent  court  of  arbitration,  Articles  XX  to  XXIX ; 
arbitral  procedure.     Articles  XXX  to  LVII.     For  a  dis- 
cussion  and   analysis   of  the  convention   see   Holls'   "The 
Peace   Conference  at  The  Hague",  pp.   173-305.     For  the 
text  of  the  convention  see  the  same  volume,  pp.  378-417. 

24  Convention    for  the   peaceful   adjustment   of   interna- 
tional differences,  Art.  II. 

25  Ibid.,  Art.  III. 
2«Ibid.,  Arts.  Ill- VII. 

27  Ibid.,  Art.  VIII.  This  proposition  was  made  by  Mr. 
Frederick  W.  Holls  in  his  individual  capacity,  and  had 
the  good  fortune  to  be  unanimously  accepted  by  the  Con- 
ference. Mr.  Holls  states  in  his  interesting  account 


98  THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

of  it  that  it  was  suggested  by  M.  de  Nelidoff,  when  Russian 
Ambassador  to  Italy,  who  was,  as  is  well  known,  Presi- 
dent of  the  Second  Hague  Conference,  as  well  as  by 
Lord  Russell  of  Killowen.  Whoever  may  have  been  the 
author  of  the  idea,  it  is,  nevertheless,  a  fact  that  its  adop- 
tion was  due  solely  to  Mr.  Holls'  initiative  and  skill.  See 
Holls'  "The  Peace  Conference  at  The  Hague",  pp.  188-203. 

28  See  Encyclopedia  Britannica    (nth  ed.),  vol.  XVIII, 
p.  22  (Article  "Mediation").    For  an  instance  of  mediation 
between    two    great    powers — Germany    and    Spain — con- 
cerning  the    Caroline   Islands,    in    which    Pope   Leo   XIII 
acted    as    mediator    in    1885,    see    Moore's    "International 
Arbitrations",  vol.  V,   pp.   5043-5046;   and  on  the  subject 
of  good  offices  and  mediation  in  general,  see  Moore's  "In- 
ternational Law  Digest",  vol.  VII,  pp.  1-22. 

29  For   President   Roosevelt's  message  of  June  8,    1905, 
mutatis  mutandis,  to  the  Ambassador  of  the  United  States 
at  St.  Petersburg  and  the  American  Minister  at  Tokyo,  as 
well  as  the  Treaty  of  Portsmouth,  of  Sept.  5,  1905,  between 
Japan    and    Russia,    which    was    the    result    of    President 
Roosevelt's   good    offices,    see   "Foreign    Relations    of    the 
United  States"   (1905),  pp.  807-828. 

30  For  an  admirable  discussion  of  the  war  between  Italy 
and  Turkey  and  the  means  by  which  it  might  have  been 
averted,    see    Sir    Thomas    Barclay's    "Turco-Italian    War 
and  Its  Problems"   (1912). 

31  For  a  brief  account  of  the  Franco-German  dispute  of 
1911   concerning  Morocco,  based  upon  official   documents, 
so    far   as   they    are   at   present   available,    see    "American 
Journal  of   International  Law"    (1912),   pp.    159-167;    and 
for  the  text  of  the  convention  of   Nov.  4,   1911,   settling 
the  dispute,   see  the   Supplement   to  this  Journal    (1912), 
pp.  62-66. 

32  Convention    for    the    peaceful    settlement    of    interna- 
tional differences,  Arts.  X-XIV. 


NOTES 


99 


33  The  opinion  that  war  might  have  been  averted,  not- 
withstanding the  destruction  of  the  Maine  is  borne  out  by 
the  official  despatches  between  Gen.  Woodford,  American 
Minister  to  Spain,  and  President  McKinley.  Thus,  on 
March  31,  1898,  twelve  days  before  President  McKinley 
sent  his  war  message  to  Congress,  and  twenty-one  days 
before  the  official  declaration  of  war,  Gen.  Woodford  tele- 
graphed the  President :  "I  believe  the  ministry  are  ready 
to  go  as  far  as  they  can  and  still  save  the  dynasty  here  in 
Spain.  They  know  that  Cuba  is  lost.  Public  opinion  in 
Spain  has  moved  steadily  toward  peace.  No  Spanish 
ministry  would  have  dared  to  do  one  month  ago  what  this 
ministry  has  proposed  to-day."  "Foreign  Relations  of  the 
United  States"  (1898),  p.  727. 

On  April  3,  1898,  he  telegraphed:  "If  conditions  at 
Washington  still  enable  you  to  give  me  the  necessary  time 
I  am  sure  that  before  next  October  I  will  get  peace  in 
Cuba  with  justice  to  Cuba  and  protection  to  our  great 
American  interests.  I  know  that  the  Queen  and  her 
present  ministry  sincerely  desire  peace  and  that  the  Spanish 
people  desire  peace,  and  if  you  can  still  give  me  time  and 
reasonable  liberty  of  action  I  will  get  for  you  the  peace 
you  desire  so  much  and  for  which  you  have  labored  so 
hard."  Ibid.,  p.  732. 

On  April  10,  1898,  the  day  before  the  message  was  sent 
to  Congress,  Gen.  Woodford  telegraphed  the  President : 
"I  hope  that  you  can  obtain  full  authority  from  Congress 
to  do  whatever  you  shall  deem  necessary  to  secure  imme- 
diate and  permanent  peace  in  Cuba  by  negotiations,  in- 
cluding the  full  power  to  employ  the  Army  and  Navy, 
according  to  your  own  judgment,  to  aid  and  enforce  your 
action.  If  this  be  secured  I  believe  you  will  get  final 
settlement  before  August  i  on  one  of  the  following  bases : 
Either  such  autonomy  as  the  insurgents  may  agree  to 
accept,  or  recognition  by  Spain  of  the  independence  of  the 


100         THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

island,  or  cession  of  the  island  to  the  United  States.  I 
hope  that  nothing  will  now  be  done  to  humiliate  Spain, 
as  I  am  satisfied  that  the  present  Government  is  going, 
and  is  loyally  ready  to  go,  as  fast  and  as  far  as  it  can. 
With  your  power  of  action  sufficiently  free  you  will  win 
the  fight  on  your  own  lines."  Ibid.,  p.  747. 

34  For   the   agreement   of   Great   Britain   and   Russia   to 
submit  the   North   Sea  incident  to   an   international  com- 
mission of  inquiry  see  "Foreign  Relations  of  the  United 
States"   (1904),  pp.  342-343.     For  the  report  of  the  com- 
mission of  inquiry,  organized  in  pursuance  of  the  declara- 
tion of  Nov.  25,  1904,  see  "Foreign  Relations  of  the  United 
States"  (1905),  pp.  473-476.     For  an  interesting  discussion 
of   the  question,   see  the   address   of   Prof.   John   Bassett 
Moore  at  the  Mohonk  Conference  on  International  Arbi- 
tration in  1905,  "Report  of  the  Eleventh  Annual  Meeting 
of  the  Mohonk  Conference  on  International  Arbitration" 
(1905),  pp.   143-150. 

35  From  William  T.  Stead's  "What  must  follow  the  Con- 
ference?"   in    the    (English)     "Review    of    Reviews"    for 
August,    1899,   p.    151,   quoted   by   Mr.   Holls   in   his   "The 
Peace  Conference  at  The  Hague",  p.  212. 

36  Convention  for  the  peaceful  settlement  of  international 
differences,  Art.  XV. 

37  Ibid.,  Art.  XVI. 

38  Ibid.,  Art.  XVIII. 

39  See  Holls'  "The  Peace  Conference  at  The  Hague",  p. 
231,  and  the  footnote,  pp.  231-236,  for  an  enumeration  of 
the  various  proposals  to  establish  a  system  of  peaceable 
adjustment  of  differences  arising  between  nations. 

40  For  Lord  Pauncefote's  address  of  May  26,  1809,  pro- 
posing the  establishment  of  a  permanent  court  of  arbitra- 
tion, see  Holls'  "The  Peace  Conference  at  The  Hague", 
pp.  231-237.    For  a  consideration  of  the  various  plans  sub- 
mitted and  the  discussion  of  them,  see  ibid.,  pp.  237-257. 


NOTES  I0i 

41  Convention    for   the   peaceful    settlement   of    interna- 
tional differences,  Art.  XXIV. 

42  Ibid.,  Art.  XXII 

43  Ibid.,  Art.  XXIII. 

44  Ibid.,  Art.  XXIV. 

45  Ibid.,  Art.  XXV. 

46  Ibid.,  Arts.  XXX-LVII. 
^  Ibid.,  XXVIII. 

48  See   "Autobiography   of   Andrew    D.   White"    (1905), 
vol.  II,  p.  354. 

49  The   following   is   a  list   of  the  cases  tried  before   a 
Temporary  Tribunal  chosen  in  accordance  with  the  provi- 
sions of  the  Convention,  with  the  date  when  the  decision 
was  rendered : 

The  Pious  Fund  Case.  United  States  of  America  v. 
Mexico,  1902. 

The  Venezuela  Preferential  Payment  Case.  Ger- 
many, Great  Britain,  and  Italy  v.  Venezuela  et 
ah.,  1904. 

The  Japanese  House  Tax  Case.  Great  Britain, 
France,  and  Germany  v.  Japan,  1905. 

The  Muscat  Dhows  Case.     Great  Britain  v.  France, 

1905. 

The  Casablanca  Case.     France  v.  Germany,  1909. 

The  Maritime  Boundary  Case.  Norway  v.  Sweden, 
1909. 

The  North  Atlantic  Coast  Fisheries  Case.  United 
States  of  America  v.  Great  Britain,  1910. 

The  Orinoco  Steamship  Company  Case.  The  United 
States  v.  Venezuela,  1910. 

The  Savarkar  Case.     France  v.  Great  Britain,  1911. 

Case  regarding  interest  on  indemnity  of  1879.  Rus- 
sia v.  Turkey.  (Not  yet  decided.) 

The  Canevaro  Case.    Italy  v,  Peru,  1912. 


102 

The  Dogger  Bank  Case  before  Commission  of  In- 
quiry. Great  Britain  v,  Russia,  1905. 

For  a  description  of  these  cases  see  an  article  by  Dr. 
James  L.  Tyron,  Yale  Law  Review,  vol.  20,  p. 
470. 

60  See  the  collection  of  General  Treaties  of  Arbitration 
communicated    to   the   International    Bureau    of    the    Per- 
manent Court  of  Arbitration,  published  by  M.  Nijhoff,  The 
Hague,  1911. 

61  For  a  description  of  the  Postal  Union  and  of  other 
similar  conventions  see  Professor  Paul  S.  Reinsch's  "Pub- 
lic International  Unions"   (1911). 

52  Professor  Moore  estimates  the  number  of  inter- 
national arbitrations  during  the  nineteenth  century  at  136. 
(See  "Harvard  Law  Review",  vol.  XIV,  p.  183.)  La 
Fontaine  estimates  the  number  from  1794  to  1900  at  177. 
(See  "Pasicrisie  Internationale,"  p.  viii.)  Dr.  Darby 
specifies  no  less  than  471  instances,  but  includes  in  this 
number  cases  submitted  to  domestic  as  well  as  international 
commissions. 

63  See  Holls'  "The  Peace   Conference  at  The   Hague", 

PP.  376-379. 

54  For     these     important     communications     see     Scott's 
"Texts  of  the  Peace  Conferences  at  The  Hague",  pp.  93-99. 

55  See  Secretary  Root's  note  of  October  12,  1905,  to  the 
Russian  Ambassador,   Scott's   "Texts  of   the   Peace   Con- 
ferences at  The  Hague",  pp.  90-101. 

56  On   the   admission  of   Latin   America   to   the   Second 
Hague  Conference,   see   Scott's  "The  Hague  Peace   Con- 
ferences  of   1899   and    1907",   vol.   I,   pp.   95-100  and   pp. 
761-773. 

57  The  American  Delegates  to  the  Second  Hague  Con- 
ference were :     Hon.  Joseph   H.   Choate,   chairman ;   Gen. 
Horace  Porter ;  Uriah  M.  Rose ;  David  Jayne  Hill ;  Gen. 
George  B.  Davis;  Rear  Admiral  Charles  S.  Sperry;  Wil- 


NOTES  103 

Ham  I.  Buchanan;  James  Brown  Scott,  technical  delegate 
and  expert  in  international  law;  Charles  Henry  Butler, 
technical  delegate  and  expert  attache;  Chandler  Hale, 
Secretary. 

88  For  the  text  of  Secretary  Root's  instructions,  see 
"Foreign  Relations  of  the  United  States"  (1907),  pp.  1128- 
1139.  This  remarkable  state  paper  is  also  to  be  found  in 
Scott's  "The  Hague  Peace  Conferences  of  1899  and  1907", 
vol.  II,  pp.  181-197. 

59  For  the  text  of  the  convention  respecting  the  limita- 
tion of  the  employment  of  force  for  the  recovery  of  con- 
tract debts,  see  Scott's  "Texts  of  the  Peace  Conferences 
at  The  Hague",  pp.  193-198.  The  convention  was  advised 
and  consented  to  by  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  on 
April  2,  1908,  subject  to  the  following  reserve  and  decla- 
ration : 

"Nothing  contained  in  this  convention  shall  be  so 
construed  as  to  require  the  United  States  of  America 
to  depart  from  its  traditional  policy  of  not  intruding 
upon,  interfering  with,  or  entangling  itself  in  the  po- 
litical questions  of  policy  or  internal  administration  of 
any  foreign  state;  nor  shall  anything  contained  in  the 
said  convention  be  construed  to  imply  a  relinquish- 
ment  by  the  United  States  of  its  traditional  attitude 
toward  purely  American  questions. 

"Resohed  further,  as  a  part  of  this  act  of  ratifica- 
tion, that  the  United  States  approves  this  convention 
with  the  understanding  that  recourse  to  the  perma- 
nent court  of  the  settlement  of  differences  can  be  had 
only  by  agreement  thereto,  through  general  or  special 
treaties  of  arbitration  heretofore  or  hereafter  con- 
cluded between  the  parties  in  dispute;  and  the  United 
States  now  exercises  the  option  contained  in  Article 
53  of  said  convention,  to  exclude  the  formulation  of 
the  'compromis'  by  the  permanent  court,  and  hereby 


104         THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

excludes  from  the  competence  of  the  permanent  court 
the  power  to  frame  the  'compromis'  required  by  gen- 
eral or  special  treaties  of  arbitration  concluded  or 
hereafter  to  be  concluded  by  the  United  States,  and 
further  expressly  declares  that  the  'compromis'  re- 
quired by  any  treaty  of  arbitration  to  which  the 
United  States  may  be  a  party  shall  be  settled  only  by 
agreement  between  the  contracting  parties,  unless  such 
treaty  shall  expressly  provide  otherwise."  Ibid.,  p. 
193,  footnote. 

60  See  "Deuxieme  Conference  Internationale  de  la  Paix; 
Actes  et  Documents",  vol.  I,  p.  338. 

61  For    General    Porter's    remarkable    address    on    intro- 
ducing the  proposition,  see  ibid.,  vol.  II,  pp.  229-233.    For 
an   English  translation,   see   Scott's   "American  Addresses 
at  the  Second  Hague  Peace  Conference",  pp.  25-33. 

62  See  "Deuxieme  Conference  Internationale  de  la  Paix ; 
Actes  et  Documents",  vol.  I,  pp.   168-169. 

63  For  the  attitude  of  the  American  Delegation,  see  Mr. 
Choate's    remarks    on    the    International    Court    of    Prize, 
July  u,  1907,  in  Deuxieme  Conference  Internationale  de  la 
Paix;  Actes  et  Documents",  vol.  II,  pp.  801-804.     The  ad- 
dress is  to  be  found  in  English  at  pp.  810-813  of  the  same 
volume;  also  in  Scott's  "American  Addresses  at  the  Sec- 
ond Hague   Peace   Conference",   pp.   70-76. 

64  For    the    International    Prize    Court    Convention    as 
finally  adopted  by  the  Conference,   see  Scott's  "Texts  of 
the  Peace  Conferences  at  The  Hague",  pp.  288-317. 

65  To  meet  the  objection  of  the  United  States,  an  addi- 
tional protocol,  to  be  considered  as  an  integral  part  of  the 
Prize  Court  Convention  and  ratified  at  one  and  the  same 
time,  was  negotiated  at  The  Hague,  Sept.  19,  1910.     The 
additional   protocol  has  been   accepted  by  all  the  nations 
which  have  approved  the  original  Prize  Court  Convention. 
Both    documents   were   advised   and   consented   to  by   the 


NOTES  105 

Senate  of  the  United  States  on  Feb.  15,  1911.  For  the  ad- 
ditional protocol,  see  the  "American  Journal  of  Interna- 
tional Law"  (1911),  vol.  V,  Supplement,  pp.  95-99. 

66  The  Declaration  of  London  was  advised  and  consented 
to  by  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  on  April  24,  1912. 

67  For  the  proceedings  of  the  First  Hague  Conference 
concerning  the  immunity  of  private  property  on  the  high 
seas  and  for  Dr.  White's  address,  see  Holls'  "The  Peace 
Conference  at  The  Hague",  pp.  306-321. 

68  See  Deuxieme  Conference  Internationale  de  la  Paix", 
vol.  Ill,  pp.  834-835. 

69  For   the    action    of    the    American    Delegation   at    the 
Second  Hague  Conference  in  the  matter  of  the  immunity 
of  private  property  on  the  high  seas,  see  Mr.  Choate's  ad- 
dress of  June  28,   1907,  in  "Deuxieme  Conference   Inter- 
nationale   de    la    Paix",    vol.    Ill,    pp.    750-764.      For    an 
English    version    of    the    address,    see    pp.    766-779;    also 
Scott's  "American  Addresses  at  the  Second  Hague  Peace 
Conference",  pp.  1-24. 

70  For  the  action  taken  by  the  American  Delegation  in 
furthering  the   establishment  of  a  truly  permanent   court 
of  arbitral  justice,  see  Mr.  Choate's  address  of  August  i, 
1907,  in  "Deuxieme  Conference  Internationale  de  la  Paix", 
vol.  II,  pp.  309-311;  for  an  English  version  thereof  see  the 
same    volume,    pp.    327-330,    also    Scott's    "American    Ad- 
dresses   at    the    Second    Hague    Peace    Conference",    pp. 
78-84;  Mr.  Scott's  address  of  August  I,  1907,  in  "Deuxieme 
Conference  de  la  Paix;  Actes  et  Documents",  vol.  II,  pp. 
313-321,   English  version,  Scott's  "American  Addresses  at 
the    Second    Hague    Peace    Conference",    pp.    84-97 !    Mr. 
Choate's   remarks   on   introducing  the   proposed   court   of 
arbitral  justice,  August  13,  1907,  in  "Deuxieme  Conference 
Internationale  de  la  Paix ;  Actes  et  Documents",  vol.  II, 
PP-  593-594,  English  version,  Scott's  "American  Addresses 
at  the  Second  Hague  Peace  Conference",  pp.  97-98;   Mr. 


106         THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

Scott's  address  introducing  the  suggested  composition  of 
the  court  of  arbitral  justice,  August  17,  1907;  in  "Deux- 
ieme  Conference  Internationale  de  la  Paix;  Actes  et  Docu- 
ments", vol.  II,  pp.  606-609,  in  English,  Scott's  "American 
Addresses  at  the  Second  Hague  Peace  Conference",  pp. 
99-103;  Mr.  Choate's  address  on  the  composition  of  the 
proposed  court  of  arbitral  justice,  September  5,  1907,  in 
"Deuxieme  Conference  Internationale  de  la  Paix;  Actes 
et  Documents",  vol.  II,  pp.  683-687,  in  English,  ibid.,  pp. 
689-693,  also  Scott's  "American  Addresses  at  the  Second 
Hague  Peace  Conference",  pp.  103-109;  Mr.  Choate's  re- 
marks on  the  selection  of  the  judges  of  the  court  of 
arbitral  justice  by  the  principle  of  election,  September  18, 
1907,  "Deuxieme  Conference  Internationale  de  la  Paix; 
Actes  et  Documents",  vol.  II,  pp.  607-699,  in  English, 
Scott's  "American  Addresses  at  the  Second  Hague  Peace 
Conference",  pp.  109-111;  Mr.  Scott's  report  to  the  Con- 
ference recommending  the  establishment  of  a  court  of 
arbitral  justice,  October  16,  1907,  in  "Deuxieme  Confer- 
ence Internationale  de  la  Paix ;  Actes  et  Documents", 
vol.  I,  pp.  347-391,  in  English,  Scott's  "American  Addresses 
at  the  Second  Hague  Peace  Conference",  pp.  112-177. 

For  the  necessity  of  an  international  court  of  arbitral 
justice,  for  the  problems  involved  in  its  establishment  and 
the  advantages  to  be  derived  from  its  successful  operation, 
see  the  "Proceedings  of  the  American  Society  for  Judicial 
Settlement  of  International  Disputes"  (1910). 

71  For  the  recommendation  of  the  Conference  that  the 
court  be  established  through  diplomatic  channels  as  soon 
as  an  agreement  was  reached  on  the  manner  of  appointing 
the  judges,  see  Scott's  "Texts  of  the  Peace  Conferences  at 
The   Hague",   pp.    138-139,   and   for   the   draft   convention 
relative  to  the  creation  of  a  judicial  arbitration  court,  see 
the  same  volume,  pp.  141-154. 

72  The   eleven   nations    were   Austria-Hungary,    France, 


NOTES  107 

Germany,  Great  Britain,  Italy  Japan,  Mexico,  Portugal, 
Spain,  Sweden  and  Norway,  Switzerland.  The  material 
provisions  of  the  treaties  were  the  following: 

"Differences  which  may  arise  of  a  legal  nature,  or 
relating  to  the  interpretation  of  treaties  existing  be- 
tween the  two  contracting  parties,  and  which  it  may 
not  have  been  possible  to  settle  by  diplomacy,  shall 
be  referred  to  the  permanent  court  of  arbitration  es- 
tablished at  The  Hague  by  the  convention  of  the  29th 
July,  1899,  provided,  nevertheless,  that  they  do  not 
affect  the  vital  interests,  the  independence,  or  the 
honour  of  the  two  contracting  states,  and  do  not  con- 
cern the  interests  of  third  parties.  (Article  I.) 

"In  each  individual  case  the  high  contracting  parties, 
before  appealing  to  the  permanent  court  of  arbitration, 
shall  conclude  a  special  agreement  defining  clearly  the 
matter  in  dispute,  the  scope  of  the  powers,  of  the  arbi- 
trators, and  the  periods  to  be  fixed  for  the  formation 
of  the  arbitral  tribunal  and  the  several  stages  of  the 
procedure".  (Article  II.) 

The  Senate  amended  the  treaties  by  striking  out  the 
word  "agreement"  in  Article  II  and  substituting  therefor 
the  word  "treaty",  the  effect  of  which  was  to  require  a 
new  special  treaty  for  every  arbitration  under  the  general 
treaty,  thus  involving  the  advice  and  consent  of  the 
Senate  in  each  instance.  As  the  President  and  Secretary 
of  State  were  unwilling  to  accept  the  amended  treaties, 
the  negotiations  with  foreign  Governments  were  dropped. 
See  Moore's  "International  Law  Digest",  vol.  VII,  pp. 
102-103. 

73  The  following  nine  States  voted  against  the  Anglo- 
American  draft  convention  :  Germany,  Austria-Hungary, 
Belgium,  Bulgaria,  Greece,  Montenegro,  Roumania,  Swit- 
zerland, Turkey.  The  following  abstained  from  voting: 
Italy,  Japan,  Luxemburg.  See  "Deuxieme  Conference  In- 


108         THE  TWO  HAGUE  CONFERENCES 

ternationale    de    la    Paix;    Actes  et    Documents",    vol.    II. 
p.  121. 

For  the  attitude  of  the  American  Delegation  in  the 
matter  of  arbitration  treaties  see  Mr.  Choate's  address  on 
the  American  project  of  international  arbitration,  July 
18,  1907,  in  "Deuxieme  Conference  Internationale  de  la 
Paix ;  Actes  et  Documents",  vol.  II,  pp.  260-263,  in  English, 
pp.  265-267,  and  Scott's  "American  Addresses  at  the  Sec- 
ond Hague  Peace  Conference",  pp.  35-39;  Mr.  Scott's 
address  on  the  compromis  clause  in  the  American  project 
of  international  arbitration,  August  31,  1907,  in  "Deuxieme 
Conference  Internationale  de  la  Paix ;  Actes  et  Docu- 
ments", vol.  II,  pp.  517-519,  in  English,  Scott's  "American 
Addresses  at  the  Second  Hague  Peace  Conference",  pp. 
40-44;  Mr.  Choate's  address  on  the  Anglo-American  pro- 
ject of  international  arbitration,  October  5,  1907,  in 
"Deuxieme  Conference  Internationale  de  la  Paix;  Actes 
et  Documents",  vol.  II,  pp.  72-77,  in  English,  pp.  91-95, 
and  Scott's  "American  Addresses  at  the  Second  Hague 
Peace  Conference",  pp.  46-53;  Mr.  Scott's  address  on  the 
retention  of  the  compromis  clause  in  international  arbi- 
tration, October  7,  1907,  in  "Deuxieme  Conference  Inter- 
nationale de  la  Paix ;  Actes  et  Documents",  vol.  II,  pp. 
112-114,  in  English,  Scott's  "American  Addresses  at  the 
Second  Hague  Peace  Conference",  pp.  53-57. 

74  The    attitude    of    the    American    Delegation    was    ex- 
pressed by  Mr.  Choate  in  his  address  of  October  n,  1907. 
See    "Deuxieme    Conference    Internationale    de    la    Paix; 
Actes  et  Documents",  vol.  II,  pp.  195-196,  in  English,  pp. 
202-203,  a°d  Scott's  "American  Addresses  at  the  Second 
Hague  Peace  Conference",  pp.  63-64. 

75  For  this    important   recommendation,    due   to   the   in- 
structions   of    Secretary    Root,    and    its    advocacy    by    the 
Chairman  of  the  American  Delegation,  see  Scott's  "Texts 
of  the  Peace  Conference  at  The  Hague",  pp.  139-140. 


NOTES 


109 


76  See  Mr.  Root's  Introduction  to  Scott's  "Texts  of  the 
Peace  Conferences  at  The  Hague",  p.  iii. 

77  The    following    works    in    English,    dealing    with    the 
Hague  Conferences,  may  be  recommended  to  readers  de- 
siring to  study  the  subjects  more  in  detail: 

"The  Peace  Conference  at  The  Hague",  by  Frederick 
W.  Holls,  D.C.L.,  New  York  (1910),  The  Mac- 
millan  Company. 

"The  Two  Hague  Conferences  and  Their  Contribu- 
tions to  International  Law",  by  William  I.  Hull, 
Ph.D.,  Boston  (1908),  Ginn  &  Co. 
"The  Hague  Conferences  and  Other  International 
Conferences  concerning  the  Laws  and  Usages  of 
War",  by  A.  Pearce  Higgins,  LLD.,  Cambridge 
(1909),  at  the  University  Press. 
"The  Hague  Peace  Conferences  of  1899  and  1907" 
(2  vols.)  by  James  Brown  Scott,  Technical  Dele- 
gate of  the  United  States  to  the  Second  Peace 
Conference  at  The  Hague,  Baltimore  (1909), 
The  Johns  Hopkins  Press. 

The  texts  of  the  Conferences  with  other  related  docu- 
ments are  to  be  found  in  Whittuck's  "International  Docu- 
ments" (1908),  Longmans,  Green  &  Co.,  and  Scott's  "Texts 
of  the  Peace  Conferences  at  The  Hague,  1899  and  1907" 
(1908),  Ginn  &  Co. 


URN 


COLLEGE  LIBRARY,  UCLA 


PERIOD   1 

MOW 

2 

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3 

5 

6 

DUE  AS  STAMPED  BELOW 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  LOS  ANGELES,  CA.  90024 


UCLA-College  Library 
JX  1918  C45 


L  005  671  473  6 


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